Amphibious warfare was in its infancy in the mid-eighteenth century – it was the poor relation of the great fleet actions that the navy so loved…
That all changed in 1758 when the British government demanded a campaign of raids on the French Channel ports. Command arrangements were hastily devised and a whole new class of vessels was produced at breakneck speed: flatboats, the ancestors of the landing craft that put the allied forces ashore on D-Day.
Commander George Holbrooke’s sloop Kestrel is in the thick of the action: scouting landing beaches, duelling with shore batteries and battling the French Navy.
In a twist of fate, Holbrooke finds himself unexpectedly committed to this new style of amphibious warfare as he is ordered to lead a division of flatboats onto the beaches of Normandy and Brittany. He meets his greatest test yet when a weary and beaten British army retreats from a second failed attempt at Saint-Malo with the French close on their heels.