It wasn't the first time that His Majesty's armed schooner Gipsy
had encountered a Caribbean hurricane. But for Lieutenant Michael
Fitton, who commanded her, this particular hurricane was to bring
quite unexpected dangers and problems: an uncharted coral island, a
clash with his old enemy the French Gloire, and the
surprising advent of Mrs Sarah Buckley. And it seemed to Fitton that
these stirring events were put in train by a cockroach - or to be
more precise, half a cockroach.
First published in 2000 Mr Fitton's Hurricane was the
eleventh and last of Showell Styles' sequence of novels about
Fitton, a real-life seafaring hero of the Napoleonic age. All eleven
are now available in Faber Finds.
Frank Showell Styles was born in Four Oaks, Warwickshire, in 1908
and served in the Royal Navy in World War Two before embarking on
his successful literary career, during which he published over 160
books. He died in 2005.