Throughout it all, Peter Wake demonstrates that most salient of American characteristics, the ability to adapt and overcome incredible challenges. Both lovers face the antipathy of their peers for having an affair with the “enemy”, but cling to each other as the only hope of tranquility in an insane world at war. He falls hopelessly and foolishly in love with Linda Donahue, the daughter of a Key West pro-Confederate zealot. The turmoil in Wake’s life comes not only from the sea and the enemy. International intrigue has its own murky reefs and shoals, giving Wake few options and many dangers, as he overcomes situations he would never have dreamed of only months before while on a schooner in New England.

Wake’s exploits earn him the recognition of the squadron’s senior leadership, and he is ordered on special missions to ascertain intelligence of Confederate operations in the shadowy and sinister world of Havana, center of the Spanish Empire in the Caribbean, and the remote outer islands of the British Bahamas. An experienced seaman and former merchant marine officer, Wake also learns that a naval officer has to be more than a good sailor, for he carries a special burden in war-the burden of intentionally sending his men into harm’s way. What he finds instead, is a dirty little guerrilla war where nothing is as it first appears, and every decision he makes has unforeseen consequences. Aboard his new command, Wake learns that the wartime naval glories and exploits he read about in the northern papers don’t exist down on the steamy coasts of subtropical Florida. He is assigned command of the Rosalie, a small armed sloop which only months before had been an enemy blockade-runner in South Carolina. He is sent to the East Gulf Blockading Squadron, based at Key West, an island off the extreme southern end of Florida. Wake follows that advice and joins the U.S. Soldiers live and die in the mud,” is the advice from his father. “If you’ve got to go to war, son, go as a sailor. The American Civil War is leaving its bloody trail across the nation and Peter Wake, a third generation New England schooner sailor, is out of work and facing conscription.

Books about civil war navies