From the author of The First to Land, a novel set during World War II. They called them the Scrapyard Flotilla. After a quarter of a century of service, the eight destroyers had seen all kinds of action. Now they were to be used in raids to open the way for the invasion of Occupied Europe.

When Captain Guy Sherbrooke joins HMS Reliant in 1943, he knows he may be her last Captain. Sister battleships have been destroyed, and Sherbrooke cannot alter the bitter truth that there will be no half measures for HMS Reliant.

The year: 1943. Now there was to be no more retreat for Britain and her Allies. At last the war was to be carried into enemy territory. And from captured bases and makeshift harbours in North Africa, the Royal Navy's Special Force was to be the probe and the spearhead of the advance. To this unorthodox war came the corvette H. M. S. Thistle and her commanding officer, John Crispin.

In 1941, when she was turned into an armed merchant cruiser, the SS Benbecula was already old. Yet even she was needed to protect the vital Atlantic sea lanes. Commander Lindsay, her new captain, had to work desperately to mould the ship’s company - raw recruits and old-timers - into a fighting force. And better than anyone, Lindsay knew this could be his last command, his last chance.

It was in 1943. On the Black Sea, the Russians were fighting a desperate battle to regain control. But the Russians’ one real weakness was on the water: whatever they did, the Germans did it better, and the daring hit-and-run tactics of the E-boats plagued them. At last the British agreed to send them a small flotilla of motor torpedo boats under the command of John Devane. Devane had been in the Navy since the outbreak of war.

January, 1944. When the British light cruiser Andromeda arrives at Williamstown naval dockyard to be handed over to the Royal Australian Navy, she is already a legend - having earned her young captain, Richard Blake, the Victoria Cross in her last victory against overwhelming odds in the Mediterranean. Blake has grown to love Andromeda, so has few regrets when he is unexpectedly told to retain his command with a British and Australian ship’s company.

Western Ocean, 1942... From the bridge of HMS Gladiator, Lieutenant-Commander David Howard’s orders were chillingly clear. There could be no mercy. To the men who fought to protect the vital, threatened Merchant Navy convoys in the Western Approaches, the Battle of the Atlantic was a full-scale war. A relentless, savage war against an ever-present enemy and a violent sea - in an arena known only to its embittered survivors as the killing ground. HMS Gladiator was part of that war.

The Mediterranean, 1943... The HMS Rob Roy. A tiny machine, just 230 feet from stem to stern. In peacetime she would have trawled for cod. Now her catch is deadlier by far. Lieutenant-Commander Ian Ransome is a veteran of the treacherous front line of naval combat. Under sealed orders in the battle-tossed waters of the Mediterranean, he and his jack-tired crew face one final test of their courage....

December 1917. Germany opens the final, bitter round of the war with a new and deadly weapon in the struggle for the seas - the Vulcan sails from Kiel Harbour. To all appearances she is a harmless merchant vessel. But her peaceful lines conceal a merciless firepower; guns, mines and torpedoes that can be brought into play instantly. The Vulcan is a commerce raider and her mission is to bring chaos to the seaways.

They were the men and women of the Royal Navy's Special Operations units. Carrying out lightning raids on hostile coasts, they became a navy within a navy - each handpicked for their individual skills, and all of them courageous. Against the mighty backdrop of World War II they performed their small but deadly operations - living often beyond hope, sometimes beyond mercy. This is the dramatic story of a handful of such people. The Volunteers.

Twenty-five years ago HMS Terrapin was part of a crack hunter/killer group in the Battle of the Atlantic. Now she is working out her last commission in the Gulf of Thailand. To Lieutenant-Commander Standish, the frigate seems to mark the end of his hopes of a career in the navy. Then a new captain arrives, a man driven by an old-fashioned, almost obsessive patriotism. And under his stubborn leadership, Standish and the crew discover a long-forgotten unity of purpose.

They are called 'The Glory Boys', by those who regard their exploits with envy. Bob is one of them. Already a survivor of the close action in the English Channel & North Sea, in January of 1943 he is ordered to the Mediterranean & beleaguered Malta.

HMS Temeraire: latest and most advanced of Britain's nuclear submarines. When Temraire's trials are cut short and she is ordered to the Far East to reinforce the fleet against a threat from Red China, her captain, David Jermain, knows that this is no routine exercise in flag-waving. And once in Asian waters, he and his submarine find themselves involved in a hidden, undeclared conflict beneath the sea.

The novel that launched the astonishing career of one of the 20th century's greatest writers of action and suspense - an acclaimed classic of heroism and the sea in World War II. The story of men who rose to heroism, and then to something greater, HMS Ulysses takes its place alongside The Caine Mutiny and The Cruel Sea as one of the classic novels of the navy at war. It is the compelling story of Convoy FR77 to Murmansk - a voyage that pushes men to the limits of human endurance.

It was an age of empire, an age of contrast, and an age of dramatic change - and one which would determine the destinies of nations as well as of men. Captain Philip Blackwood of the Royal Marines rejoins his ship, HMS Audacious, in August of 1850, anxious to get back into action. "Per Mare - Per Terram" is the marines' motto. In the torturous heat of Africa, where they are sent to stamp out the remaining strongholds of slavery, and later, in the bitter war of the Crimea, Philip Blackwood and his men learn to obey it without question.