LIEUTENANT Leigh Galbraith strode aft along the frigate’s main deck and into the shadows of the poop. He was careful not to hurry, or to show any unusual concern which might create rumour amongst the groups of seamen and marines working at their various forenoon tasks.

Galbraith was tall and powerfully built, and had learned the hard way to accustom himself to low deckhead beams in one of His Britannic Majesty’s ships of war. He was Unrivalled’s first lieutenant, the one officer who was expected to maintain order and discipline as well as oversee the training of a new ship’s company. To assure his captain that she was in all respects an efficient unit of the fleet, even to assume command at any time should some disaster befall him.

The first lieutenant was twenty-nine years old, and had been in the navy since the tender age of twelve like many of his contemporaries. It was all he had known, all he had ever wanted, and when he had been promoted to acting commander and given a ship of his own he had thought himself the luckiest man alive. A senior officer had assured him that as soon as convenient he would take the next step, make the impossible leap to full captain, something which had once seemed like a dream.

He paused by an open gunport and leaned on one of the frigate’s thirty eighteen-pounders, and stared at the harbour and the other anchored ships. Carrick Roads, Falmouth, glittering in the May sunshine. He tried to contain the returning bitterness, the anger. He might have had a command like this fine ship. Could. Might. He felt the gun’s barrel warm under his fingers, as if it had been fired. Like all those other times. At Camperdown with Duncan, and at Copenhagen following Nelson’s flag. He had been commended for his coolness under fire, his ability to contain a dangerous situation when his ship was locked in battle with an enemy. His last captain had put his name forward for a command. That had been the brig Vixen, one of the fleet’s workhorses, expected with limited resources to perform the deeds of a frigate.