The Black Ship

Legend has it that Patrick O'Brian's editor paid that author's first manuscript what he considered to be high praise indeed: he compared it to the works of Dudley Pope. The late Pope's naval histories are renowned for the way they share the riveting, evocative character of his novels. This is true of none more than his masterly The Black Ship, a work of nonfiction that reads like a thriller. In a true story evocative of…