Lieutenant Gabriel "Gabe" Anthony strode up the companionway to the main deck just before first light. Though the faces were not clearly visible, Gabe knew each of his men. In the few months they'd been together they had meshed into a good crew. A good crew and a good ship.

SeaWolf was a thoroughbred, a brigantine. She was captured at the onset of the war with the colonies. Her master had the ill fortune of being caught on a lee shore by a British frigate and was never able to use the ship for the purpose she was built. She was to have been a predator, a privateer, raiding British commerce. Now she was being used against her former masters.

Gabe, like many, was not sure he agreed with the politics that caused this war with the colonies.

He'd do his duty as his brother, Lord Anthony, had often stated, but being a man of intelligence, he had to question some of the British policies. He'd heard Commodore Gardner discuss Lord North's complacency and his underestimation of the colonies' abilities many times.

Well, this ship was proof positive of Britain 's complacency about shipbuilding. They'd never have built a vessel like SeaWolf. British shipbuilders continued with the same old plans, making the same old mistakes and never seeming to learn. Colonial shipbuilders had recognized the need for change and made modifications to improve a ship's performance. The bow was sharper and cut through the water. The keel was deepened to give the ship more balance under full sail plus the keel was more curved aft so as to draw less water. A brigantine was a swift vessel and more easily maneuvered than larger ships. It was the perfect privateer.

SeaWolf was one-hundred feet long, thirty feet across the beam. She was armed with eighteen six-pounders and six swivel guns. She carried two masts. She was square-rigged on the foremast and on the main-mast, a fore-and-aft mainsail. When needed, stay-sails could also be bent on.