Dudley Pope

Broschiertes Buch

The Devil Himself

The Mutiny of 1800

Beschreibung

The French corvette La Vaillante, built in 1796, was captured and renamed Danae by the British Royal Navy in 1798. Two years later, she was returned to France in an amazing fashion: her British crew mutinied, sailed the Danae to France, and turned her over to the enemy for a cash reward. Accurate, fair, thorough, and lively, this penetrating account of a mutiny and its aftermath is compiled from contemporary British documents and the dusty French naval archives. Dudley Pope describes the men, the ship, and the tragic chain of events following their capture by a press-gang, bringing this extraordinary 1800 mutiny to life and chronicling those who survived, hanged, or died disgraced in a far-off colonial posting. This history is also significant in that it inspired Pope to try his hand at fiction, resulting in the Lord Ramage novels. The historical figures and events found in this true story are the basis for some of the favorite fictional characters and plot elements in Pope’s novels.

Autor

Dudley Bernard Egerton Pope was born in 1925 into an ancient Cornish seafaring family. He joined the Merchant Navy at the age of sixteen and spent much of his early life at sea. He was torpedoed during the Second World War and resulting spinal injuries plagued him for the rest of his life. Towards the end of the war Pope turned to journalism, becoming the Naval and Defence Correspondent for the 'London Evening News'. At this time he also researched naval history and in time became an authority on the Napoleonic era and Nelson's exploits, resulting in several well received volumes, especially on the Battles of Copenhagen and Trafalgar. Encouraged by Hornblower creator CS Forester, he also began writing fiction using his own experiences in the Navy and his extensive historical research as a basis. In 1965, he wrote 'Ramage', the first of his highly successful series of novels following the exploits of the heroic 'Lord Nicholas Ramage' during the Napoleonic Wars. Another renowned series is centred on 'Ned Yorke', a buccaneer in the seventeenth century Caribbean and then with a descendant following the 'Yorke' family naval tradition when involved in realistic secret operations during the Second World War. Dudley Pope lived aboard boats whenever possible, along with his wife and daughter, and this was where he wrote the majority of his novels. Most of his adult life was spent in the Caribbean and in addition to using the locale for fictional settings he also wrote authoritatively on naval history of the region, including a biography of the buccaneer Sir Henry Morgan. He died in 1997 aged seventy one. 'The first and still favourite rival to Hornblower' - Daily Mirror

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Globe Pequot Publishing
• Seitenzahl: 220
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Mai 2003
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 14mm
• Gewicht: 368g
• ISBN-13: 9781590130353
• ISBN-10: 1590130359
• Artikelnr.: 22122941