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Falcon's Revenge: A Nathan Beauchamp of the Royal Navy Novel

by Joseph L. O'Steen

231 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0874; ISBN 1-4120-0505-1; US$22.00, C$24.95, EUR18.00, £12.50

This six book series follows young Nathan Beauchamp's British Naval career during the Napoleonic Wars. Falcon's Revenge finds Nathan (Nate) making his way back to Portsmouth for reassignment to the rebuilding fleet. He battles pirates, privateers, nature, a sinking ship, and finds and loses romance.

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about the book      about the author      reviews      sample excerpt      catalogue info

About the Book The Peace of Amiens has ended. Nathan Beauchamp is ordered home for reassignment to the rebuilding fleet. He has missed the packet so must return as first officer on the Brig HMS Sampson. As the damaged Sampson sinks, Nate captures the attacking Privateer cutter Bateuse and discovers the privateers began attacking British shipping prior to the start of the war; that makes them Pirates. He also learns the pirates have an encampment on a nearby island. Nate decides to attack the camp. A cutting out expedition results in the capture of the renegade leader Roseau. Roseau's captured ship, the Vipere, is taken into the King's Navy. Her original name HMS Falcon is restored due to politics, and Roseau is exchanged to the French for an influential Kingston plantation owner. Soon Roseau takes up his old trade once more. Admiral Skinner recruits Nathan for one more mission.

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About the Author Joseph was born February 16, 1950 in Jacksonville, Florida. He started life as the son of a commercial fisherman. His father first took him to sea at age four. He spent his early youth on the shrimping grounds of St.Augustine, Cape Canaveral and Key West, Florida. Usually the fishing boats only went to sea in good weather but one trip caught the boat on the edge of a hurricane. The adults were frightened but for a seven year old, tied in the wheelhouse chair, riding the 30-foot waves and sliding downward into the trough between the waves was like a ride at a carnival. The happiest times of Joseph's childhood were on those trips to the fishing grounds. Joseph was adopted at age eleven and settled into a life ashore. His love of the sea never died. He visited the local docks talking to the fishermen almost every day. Joseph read every nautical book he could get his hands on and watched every movie about the sea, from pirates and age of sail to the modern stories of WWII. His heroes were the great ships and the men who sailed them. Eventually the call of the sea was too strong. Joseph ran away in his senior year of high school to join the US Navy. Joseph spent two enlistments in the Navy where he made two cruises on the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy that took him to the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the Mediterranean and Caribbean Sea. He visited ports steeped in nauticl history in France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Scotland and Jamaica. Joseph never lost his love of the sea and sea stories. He has read all of C.S. Forester, Patrick O'Brien, Alexander Kent, Dudley Pope and dozens of other author's sea stories. He read so many, so fast, that they could not be published fast enough. He would wait for months for the latest book to be published. Joseph's wife, Chris, persuaded him to write his own sea stories while waiting for Alexander Kent's Second to None to be released. He started writing as a naval officer at the Hart of Oaks role playing site on line, where he created Nathan Beauchamp, a British Naval officer in 1803. Soon the role playing was not enough. Joseph researched British naval histories and started to write the Nathan Beauchamp series. With his books Joseph has provided the reader with a fast paces, action filled, sea story without the great detail to ship and sail handling found in most books of this genre. His style provides new readers an entry to the much more detailed books of the great authors whose work he loves. Forester, Kent, Pope, O'Brien, White, Nelson and so many more have provided him with many hours of reading pleasure as their protagonists waged war in the age of sail. Joseph hopes his readers will enjoy the Nathan Beauchamp series as much as he enjoys writing it.

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Reviews

It's 1803, and Britain is once again at war with France, as Lieutenant Nathan Beauchamp, Acting First Officer on board the H.M.S. Sampson, sets sail from Kingston for Portsmouth and home. The Sampson is a tired old ship, and Captain Kenneth Dexter is on his last assignment before retirement. Nate Beauchamp has seen his share of action during the Caribbean tour of duty he's just completed, so - especially with a civilian planter and the man's pretty daughter as passengers - it would be fair to say that everyone hopes for an uneventful passage.

The sea and the French have other ideas, of course. With his captain taken out of action by fierce storm, it's all up to young Nate when the Sampson's persistent leaks overcome the pumps. Can things get worse?

Why, certainly they can. And swiftly do, in this theater of war that's prowled by pirates as well as by French ships.

Joseph L. O'Steen is a born storyteller whose writing style reminds me strongly of C.S. Forester, with its combination of simplicity and (when his characters speak) courtliness. The book starts off slowly, as characters are introduced and background is provided; but that is acceptable in this genre, and things soon take off and then keep moving.

Like Horatio Hornblower, Nathan Beauchamp is a flawed hero. In this tale he is also a very young man, just learning (despite being a senior officer's son) that his superiors are fellow humans - and still seeing women, especially lovely passenger Susan Raitt, as distractions better left ashore. I expect that as the planned series of books about him proceeds, Beauchamp will grow, change, and flesh out. In "Falcon's Revenge" he has a satisfactory first outing, in which both character and author show a great deal of promise.

Reviewed by Nina M. Osier, author of Love, Jimmy: A Maine Veteran's Longest Battle (http://www.geocities.com/nina_osier/) - and long time lover of a good sea story!

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Sample Excerpt

... Admiral Skinner leaned over his huge oak desk. "Lieutenant Beauchamp, ships have souls, you know." THe admiral rose. "The Falcon was severly abused by those privateer fellows. She was taken and used to attack her own countrymen. She deserves her revenge." He walked and stood before Nathan. "I have no doubt, you are the man to give her that revenge to cleanse her soul." ...

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Catalogue Information

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