New website and Book 10

Welcome to my new website. I hope you enjoy it, and that you will return from time to time as it continues to improve and grow. My hope is that it becomes an interesting place not only for readers of the Nicholas Cruwys series, but for anyone who enjoys maritime history and admires the extraordinary achievements of the Royal Navy and other navies of the age—and, beyond the navies themselves, the seamanship, courage and endurance of all those who went to sea in an extraordinarily demanding time.

Book 10, The Company's Ocean, should be out very soon. I hope it receives the same warm reception as First of June, which, judging by the messages and reviews I have received, many readers seem to have particularly enjoyed. I am very much looking forward to sharing Nicholas Cruwys's next voyage with you.

The cover art for this book will be a section of Nicholas Pocock’s A Fleet of East Indiamen at Sea (1803), which depicts an East India Company convoy returning from China in early 1802, commanded by Commodore George Millett. At the centre is the 1,248-ton East Indiaman Hindostan, built in 1796, with Millett serving as senior officer of a convoy of eighteen East Indiamen. Hindostan has signalled the ships to wear in succession, with the sternmost and leewardmost ships going first. Eleven other ships in the convoy are known by name: Lord Hawkesbury, Worcester, Boddam, Fort William, Airly Castle, Lord Duncan, Ocean, Henry Addington, Carnatic, Hope, and Windham. Pocock himself had been a merchant-sea captain and was particularly respected for the accuracy of his ships and rigging, making the painting an unusually credible depiction of the great armed merchant fleets that carried the East India Company’s trade across the oceans