Matthew's Prize

England is on the cusp of its Empire, but as the Dutch trade wars come to a close, so the struggles with the French for naval supremacy are just beginning. Matthew Stalborne Loftus is an unhappy Whitby, Yorkshire, lad in the 1690s star-struck by the sea and by science. He studies navigation as a way to make a career on the oceans of the world and leaves Whitby aboard ship, only to risk his life saving another, ending up on a Dutch trader to the Indies. Eventually he finds himself among the pirates and slave-traders of the Spanish Main.