Send a Gunboat: World War 2 Naval Fiction
By (Author) Douglas Reeman
Cornerstone
Arrow Books Ltd
21st April 1993
18th February 1980
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary
823.914
Paperback
256
Width 110mm, Height 178mm, Spine 16mm
139g
A classic of naval fiction from 'the master of the modern sea story'. HMS Wagtail is a river gunboat, a ship seemingly at the end of her useful life, lying in a Hong Kong dockyard awaiting her last summons to the breakers' yard. Commander Justin Rolfe is also seemingly at the end of his useful naval life, an embittered man, brooding and angry from a court-martial verdict. Then the offshore island of Santu is threatened with invasion from the Chinese mainland. The small British community must be brought out and Commander Rolfe and the Wagtail are ordered to the island. The job is regarded with sullen resentment by his crew, but to Rolfe, and even the ship, it is a job that offers the chance of a reprieve and a restoration of self respect.
Douglas Reeman did convoy duty in the navy in the Atlantic, the Arctic, and the North Sea. He has written over thirty novels under his own name and more than twenty best-selling historical novels featuring Richard Bolitho under the pseudonym Alexander Kent.