Summoned to the Admiralty by Sir Edward Pellew, Captain Adam Bolitho is ordered to sail his 46-gun frigate Unrivalled into African waters to aid His Majesty's campaign against slave-runners. Preoccupied with avenging his uncle Richard's death while confronting an entrenched adversary and the aggressive opposition of the Algerian overlord, he fears he may be setting his crew on a course of doom.

This tale begins with Jack Aubrey arriving home from his exploits in the Mediterranean to find England at peace following the Treaty of Amiens. He and his friend Stephen Maturin, surgeon and secret agent, begin to live the lives of country gentlemen, hunting, entertaining and enjoying more amorous adventures. Their comfortable existence, however, is cut short when Jack is overnight reduced to a pauper with enough debts to keep him in prison for life....

April 1797, Falmouth Bay. As France continues her bitter struggle for supremacy on land and sea, the Royal Navy receives a crippling blow at home: the Great Mutiny. Returning home after eighteen-months' service, Flag Captain Richard Bolitho finds himself at the center of the crisis.

Lewrie loses his ship and his command when he receives news that Vigilance must return to England to be decommissioned and turned over to the dockyards for a complete refit. Lewrie is grounded, put on half-pay, and his crew disperses to look for new positions. It's late Autumn, and being ashore is heavenly, after a time. Lewrie spends time with his wife Jessica, helps his son Hugh find a new ship, and happily marries off Charlotte. Life onshore is...

Captain Alan Lewrie of the Royal Navy is ordered to head to Cuba and Spanish Florida to search for French and Spanish privateers who have been preying on British merchantmen and discover if the privateers have been getting aid from the Americans.

Two men, Captain Jack Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship's doctor and intelligence agent, become fast friends aboard a man-of-war ship during the Napoleonic wars.

Career advancement for naval officers is generally considered to lie in progressively more demanding assignments in ships and staffs while at sea and those supporting the fleet when ashore. In fact, beyond these ""core"" career assignments, there are abundant opportunities in strategic and national security policymaking and even diplomacy and foreign.