'Giving rein at last to his excellent narrative gifts, Mr Padfield has his readers thoroughly involved.'
The Mariner's Mirror

This novel by one of Britain's leading naval historians introduces Lieutenant Guy Greville, intelligence officer of Her Majesty's corvette Dulcinea off east Africa in the final decade of the nineteenth century.

The Royal Navy is attempting to end the trade in Africans driven across the continent and shipped from the east coast up to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf for the slave markets of the Middle East. But chests of modern arms found in one intercepted dhow draw the Dulcinea into great power intrigue.

Searching for clues to the shipment, Guy Greville is led from the scented courtyards of old Zanzibar, and the enchanting young wife of an Arab slave trader, to action at sea and ashore on the plains of the interior.

The story is told with all the verve and descriptive power that has established the author's reputation for vivid narrative. Here is Africa in the cruel days of the slave trade and the European scramble for colonies, Britain at the height of her civilising mission, the Royal Navy at the zenith of its world power and arrogance; and here are its larger than life characters engaged in the imperial game.
About the Author: Peter Padfield is a leading naval historian and biographer. He trained for the sea as a cadet in H.M.S.Worcester, subsequently serving in the P & O Line. In 1957 he sailed under Cdr. Alan Villiers in the replica pilgrim bark, Mayflower II, from Plymouth, England to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where Mayflower is now preserved. Working his passage to the south Pacific he sailed among the Solomon Islands before leaving the sea and settling with his wife in Suffolk, England. His first major book, The Titanic and the Californian defended the captain of the Californian from the charge of not going to Titanic's rescue. He subsequently turned to naval subjects, particularly great gunnery, strategy and tactics. His biography of the U-boat admiral, Karl Donitz, led him to a portrayal of submarine warfare in War Beneath the Sea, and to biographies of other leading Nazis, Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Hess, subsequently translated into many European languages. Latterly he has returned to naval history, attempting to bring it out of the specialist closet and present it as a major determinant of the modern world in a trilogy whose second volume, Maritime Power and the Struggle for Freedom, won the Mountbatten Maritime Prize, 2003."