Hazzard's Convoy

 This is the fourth book in Jonathan Spencer's series, which focuses on the exploits of marine officer William John Hazzard in the Mediterranean during the Revolutionary Wars. It seemed appropriate holiday reading, as I was in Marmaris Bay, the site of Abercromby's preparation for the invasion of Egypt.

This story covers the period in the year before Abercromby's invasion, up to the Battle of Heliopolis. Napoleon has just abandoned his army in Egypt, leaving a very disgruntled Kleber in command. As Kleber himself put it, ‘The army is at half its strength… disease is prevalent, and the soldiers are in rags…When Bonaparte sailed, he did not leave a penny in the till, nor any cash equivalent. On the contrary, he left a deficit of almost 10 million… The soldiers’ pay in arrears accounts for 4 million alone. […] He saw the fatal crisis approaching.’

The story also touches on naval actions in the Adriatic, the subject of my book The Frontier Sea, particularly the prospects of a fleet built in the Venetian shipyards. The key French ship opposing Hazzard in the story is Généreux, a ship of the line that escaped from Corfu. Historically, the threat from Venice was much more serious later in the Napoleonic Wars, so much so that the Royal Navy had to send its own ships off the line to deal with it.

Hazzard is no ordinary marine officer. He commands a small unit of marines allocated to special missions, part of the nascent intelligence operations of the period that are commonplace today. The story style is very Sharpe-like, and his exploits are even more unlikely. Some naval actions are bordering on the absurd, but this is fiction. I won't spoil the story by giving the details, but it has all the features you would expect in this genre. 

Overall, it's a grand tall tale, not to be taken too seriously. It got me through the flights on holiday.

It also inspired last week's midweek game using Rebels and Patriots rules. The French contested a British landing in Egypt. My marines are considerably more uniformed than Hazzard's piratical command. However, unlike Hazzard, they were thrown back into the water. In fairness, that probably has more to do with my generalship!