John G. Cragg Libri

Early in 1805, England and France are at war, but little is happening. Napoleon has a huge army encamped in the heights above Boulogne. An armada of landing craft waits in the port and other nearby harbors to embark them to cross the English Channel. The invasion cannot be accomplished because the Royal Navy controls the crossing and could blow the invasion craft out of the water if they sailed. The French fleet is trapped by the British in various major ports. Stalemate is the situation. It will remain so unless the French can assemble enough ships to sweep the British fleet aside, or give up their invasion plans and turn the war in other directions.Captain Sir Richard Giles, Viscount Ashton, starts the year at his home, Dipton Hall, recovering from wounds sustained in his latest battle. A neighboring estate becomes available as a result of the owner being convicted of smuggling and attempted murder. Giles and Daphne, his wife, decide to purchase the place, but before he can find out much about his acquisition, he must return to his frigate. Daphne is left to handle the problems of taking possession of the property as well as attending to a myriad of tasks involved in managing the estate and being a leader of society. To complicate matters, Daphne discovers that she has acquired a hoard of smuggled goods with the property they had bought. Breaking up the smuggling ring has produced a shortage of the luxury goods so needed by the gentry. Daphne must find a way to distribute the needed material which she obtained by buying the new estate while not being seen to be sinking into the lower social ranks of those who engage in trade.Aided by her sister-in-law's financé, she accomplishes this brilliantly, averting social disasters while helping to pay for His Majesty's Navy. Aided by various men of her acquaintance, including the mysterious Mr. Justice Amery, she starts a viable contra-smuggling enterprise to provide luxury goods. Meanwhile, Giles's primary mission is coming to nothing. Nevertheless, he does have various naval adventures that will harm the French cause and help the British, including destroying a French fort and rescuing a large number of British naval prisoners. Returning to England with the prisoners he has liberated gives him an opportunity to visit Dipton just in time to participate in destroying the existing smuggling venture along the canal. Giles must return to sea. His departure means that he will miss many of the social activities which Daphne has arranged to cement their position as the leading landowners in the area. However, he is lucky enough to capture a French frigate with orders that might have a serious impact on breaking the stalemate. His duty takes him away to Ireland to try to frustrate those plans. All the while, Daphne is wrestling with the problems of running their various estates, taking a leading place in local society, setting up the counter-smuggling enterprise, continuing her match-making attempts and playing with her baby son even while pregnancy means that there will soon be another child to add to her activities,Giles and Daphne are reunited in the end after Giles returns home after an unprecedented defeat of French forces, and Daphne returns too after a disastrous attempt to persuade some leading gentlemen in another town of the virtues of only purchasing goods on which the excises have been paid. However, they cannot settle into a comfortable routine as country aristocrats. Giles still has his duty, and the war is still stalemated.

1804. Britain is at war with Napoleon's France. Captain Sir Richard Giles is enjoying a well-deserved break at his home, Dipton Hall, before being assigned to a new naval mission. News arrives that his half-brothers are dead. Giles is their heir, but they leave him more problems than rewards. Any difficulties that he cannot straighten out himself will have to be resolved by his wife, Daphne. After introducing her to London life, he takes her on the maiden, shake-down cruise of his new frigate, only to have the interlude at sea include a battle with an equally powerful French vessel. Giles's mission involves his going to St. Petersburg carrying with him an obnoxious special envoy. Giles himself carries the terms for a special, secret naval treaty. All is not smooth sailing for him in the Russian capital as he must evade both suspected spies and also the enthusiastic efforts at seduction by some noble ladies. At the same time, his own crew brings dishonor on his ship. His contacts with the Russian Navy at their principal base of Kronstadt go much better than did his social life in the Russian capital. He engages in a competition with the cream of the Russian navy. Evicted from St. Petersburg due to the special envoy being declared persona non grata, Giles must aid his friend Captain Bush to defeat two French frigates in order clear the way for him to return to Daphne.Meanwhile, despite her being pregnant, Daphne is left to straighten out the mess left by the death of her older brother-in-law. This involves her plunging reluctantly into the seamier side of Georgian society. It seems that her husband has been totally entangled in a web by which he must support a most disreputable business. Daphne uses bluff and guile to turn the tables on her sleazy opponents and to escape, with a profit, the web in which she appears to be trapped. Back at Dipton Hall, Daphne gives birth to her son, but her recovery from the ordeal is cut short by the need to outwit a plot to wrench control of her husband's rotten borough from Giles's control and to counter the ill-will of the man who tried to steal the election. Her difficulties are only resolved by the fortuitous return of her husband who outwits their nefarious rival despite being himself seriously wounded.

The war is still on. Captain Sir Richard Giles, Viscount Ashton, has to put a spike in Napoleon's latest attempt to divert British attention from the Emperor's main plans. To do so, he first has to discover what the French are plotting. This task, in turn, requires him to venture far into French waters, pretending to be part of the crew of an English smuggling ship. Dealing with what he finds is not easy. It requires eluding or defeating a French battleship, seizing a French frigate., and capturing a battalion of French soldiers. London Society had earlier been trying to draw in Giles and his wife, Daphne, as they attend splendid functions both at the King's palace and at the Prince of Wales's mansion. Giles is awarded an honor, and Daphne is presented to the Queen. They have a toe in the pond of High Society, but they are not yet prepared to dive into it. There are more important things for them to do.Giles's tasks do not end with destroying the French initiative. He and his frigate, Glaucus, must voyage to the West African coast. Pirates have been seizing vessels of the East India Company and holding the ships, crews, and passengers for ransom. To handle this situation, not only must Giles defeat the pirates, but he also has to attack their stronghold and facilitate a coup d'etat. Even then, his problems are not finished. A French frigate off the coast of Portugal tries to interfere with his voyage home and seize the ships he has liberated from the pirates.Meanwhile, Daphne's intention of spending all her time managing their estate while her husband is at sea runs into difficulties. Her uncle, who owns a factory in Birmingham, is taken ill. Only Daphne seems to be able to solve the dilemmas that arise when a crooked lawyer tries to steal her uncle's company. That task alone would make Daphne overburdened. However, there is still another urgent call on her energies. Her father-in-law, who is at death's door, tries to divert the monies that should go to his wife to his mistress. The weak legal status of married women makes it hard to frustrate these plans. Nevertheless, Daphne finds ways to protect her mother-in-law and the inheritances of her own children. Giles returns to find that Daphne has everything under control. His father's death will not have the devastating effect with which he had intended to burden his wife and his heir.

Captain Sir Richard Giles is now married to the former Daphne Moorhouse, but the demands of war take him to sea almost at once. His frigate is engaged in harassing French preparations for invasion, dealing with privateers, contending with the influence system in naval establishments and being peripherally engaged in espionage activities. Meanwhile Daphne is fully occupied managing her husband's and father's estates and taking her new role as the wife of a major member of the landed gentry and as the doyenne of a great house. Fox hunting becomes a major preoccupation for Daphne while concerns about getting more satisfactory situations for her not very welcome relatives get her scheming to arrange satisfactory marriages for them. Only at rare intervals do the two principals get together to share their lives and interests, but these result in truely memorable moments.

Captain Sir Richard Giles has used the peace of Amiens to find and purchase a rural estate at Dipton It will provide living quarters for his relatives and an opportunity to pursue his interest in agricultural processes and improvements, a task where he may find assistance from the daughter of his immediate neighbor. She seems to be more interested in estate management and improvement than in the more usual pursuits of young ladies. A French frigate of possibly new design has been using the period of peace to take British frigates and merchant ships illegally and spirit the captures to some unknown base. Giles is called from his bucolic pursuits to take command of a newly built frigate whose task is to find and destroy the enemy vessel and recapture her prizesWhile Captain Giles is doing this, life continues apace at Dipton so that when Giles can snatch some leave, he finds that things have not remained static. The novel tells of how events develop at sea and also on land in the early days following the abrogation of the treaty of Amiens.