A Brutal Bloody Business

Book excerpt: My name is not important; know me only as the Master Gunner of the Harlequin and the narrator of this tale. This is my story of the short brutal life of one of Nelson's warships. Follow her through planning, building, training, fighting and dying. Let me introduce you to a selection of her crew and experience their working life at sea. Her battles are bloody but her glorious victories earn her the right to a heroic return to Portsmouth. Throughout her brief history, her company come to regard her as a lucky ship but finally, back within sight of the very cliffs of England, her luck deserts her and fate decrees that she should die. --- she, and all but twenty souls of her company had survived for barely one year. I was one of the lucky ones; witness now then, if you will, my narrative. ---