Here is a true story based on the adventures of Captain Luke Ryan - Irish swashbuckler American patriot mariner extraordinaire and Benjamin Franklin's most dangerous privateer... It is an epic story about war heroism love intrigue and betrayal spanning a period from the American Revolution to the French Revolution and through the rise of Napoleon. It is the spring of 1781 and the British Navy has finally caught the brilliant Captain Ryan a man who terrorized English ships and towns for nearly two years. Ryan is tried for treason and piracy convicted and sentenced to hang until King George grants mercy after hearing the pleas of Queen Marie Antoinette an admirer of the young mariner to spare the Irishman's life. After the war Ryan returns to France but he has no money no ship or crew and has no prospects until one day he meets an ambitious entrepreneur named Joseph Bonaparte and his younger brother a major in the French Army named Napoleon... The story is told in three books: Gather the Shadowmen (The Lords of the Ocean) Prince of the Atlantic and Napoleon's Gold (which can be read in or out of sequence).
