The Home of Naval Fiction in the Age of Fighting Steam
Welcome To The Adventure!
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Nicholas Dawlish is a British naval officer as the British Empire reaches its apogee in the late Victorian period. The Age of Sail is dying slowly and Dawlish is building his career in the new era of steam, ironclads, heavy guns and torpedoes that is replacing it. It’s also an age of rapid political and social change. Old enemies and new empires are challenging Britain’s global power, often through vicious proxy conflicts which offer Dawlish opportunities for advancement, though at the risk of his life and his integrity. The eleven volumes published so far are all linked to actual historical events and are set in locales as various as the Black Sea and the Balkans in winter, a river-system in the heart of South America, the luxury and squalor of the United States’ Gilded Age, Cuba in revolt, Denmark under attack from Prussia and Austria, Korea as it emerges from centuries of isolation, the slave trade and German colonial ambitions in East Africa, the Sudan engulfed in an Islamist revolt and – not the least deadly – the corrupt and brutal underside of the complacent and outwardly respectable society of Late-Victorian Britain.
Antoine Vanner
Britannia’s Rule
The New Dawlish Chronicles Novel – Published 10th December 2022
Click above for purchase details
It’s 1886, some eighteen months since Captain Nicholas Dawlish RN returned from the Sudan and the events covered in Britannia’s Gamble. He’s commanding a flotilla of the Royal Navy’s latest warships, including the massive battleship HMS Scipio. He’s at Trinidad when news arrives of a volcanic eruption on a small West Indian island. The situation is worsening and only decisive action can avert massive loss of life.
Dawlish and his ships are ordered to race there to render help. His enemy will be an angry mountain, vast in its malevolent power, a challenge that no naval officer has faced before.But Dawlish’s contest with the volcano is just the prelude to a longer association with the island. Its sovereignty is split – a British Crown Colony in the west and, in the east, an independent republic established seven decades earlier by self-emancipated slaves.
When wrenched from France through war, both parts of the island seemed glittering economic prizes. Now they are impoverished backwaters where resentment seethes and old grudges fester. For many, the existence of a ‘black republic’ is resented, an affront to be excised.And in France, a man of limitless ambition, backed by powerful interests, sees the turmoil as an opportunity that could bring him to absolute power. If he succeeds, he may perhaps trigger war in Europe on a scale unseen since the fall of Napoleon.Through this maelstrom, Nicholas Dawlish must navigate a skillful course. Political concerns complicate challenges that can only be resolved by ruthless guile and calculated use of force. Lacking direct support from the Royal Navy, Dawlish must fight some of the most vicious sea and land battles of his career with inadequate resources and unlikely – and unreliable – allies.
The Dawlish Chronicles Series
Antoine Vanner, author of the Dawlish Chronicles series spent many years in the international oil industry and still travels extensively on a private basis. His understanding of human nature, passion for nineteenth-century political and military history and first-hand experience of his books’ locales provide the background to his novels centred on the lives of Royal Navy officer Nicholas Dawlish and his wife Florence.
“Antoine Vanner is the Tom Clancy of historical naval fiction.” – Author Joan Druett
Below are the eleven Dawlish Chronicles novels published to date.
Click Here or on the image above for more information on the individual books.
Click here to see how they relate to the life of Nicholas Dawlish (1845 – 1918).
All are available in Paperback or Kindle format and can be read at no extra charge by Kindle Unlimited or Kindle Prime Subscribers.
In Audiobook format also…
Britannia’s Wolf is also available as an audio-book. It’s been read by the distinguished American actor David Doersch. If you haven’t previously ordered an audio-book from audible.com you can download it without cost as part of a 30-Day Free Trial. You can listen on your Smart Phone, Tablet or MP3 Player. Click here for details.
A Life of Service and Adventure
Admiral Sir Nicholas Dawlish (1845-1918) is probably best remembered today for leaving retirement in 1914, at the request of his friend and sometime rival Lord Fisher, to assume responsibility for Unconventional Naval Operations.
His imaginative filling of that role, and his death at the age of seventy-two on the Zeebrugge Mole, where he fell in a hail of machine-gun fire on St.George’s Day 1918, (making him the oldest serving officer to fall in action in either World War), ended an illustrious career in a manner which he would have found wholly appropriate…
Click here, to read about Dawlish’s life and how the individual books chronicle it.
Click here, or on “Conflict” on the top bar, to learn about the world he lived in, its challenges, its personalities, its crises and its weapons. There are also dozens of articles about the “Age of Fighting Sail 1700-1837” as well as the early 20th Century.
The Dawlish Chronicles Blog
Antoine Vanner blogs weekly – and often more frequently – on naval and more general history and personalities in the period 1700-1918. Topics include naval warfare in the Age of Fighting Sail, the transition from Sail to Steam, international rivalries, dramatic happenings and little known events that have helped shape the world we live in. The topics are never predictable but always entertaining. In this blog Antoine draws heavily on information he has come across during his researches for the Dawlish Chronicles but which may not be directly used in the books themselves. It is however too good to let to go to waste – and hence the blog! You can find the most recent blogs below and many of the older postings (some two hundred!) can be accessed by clicking on “Conflict” on the bar above.
Free Short-stories for your Kindle
Dawlish Chronicles Mailing List
Join the list and download free copies of six free short stories to read on your Kindle, tablet or computer by clicking on any one of the images above
Registering for the mailing list will keep you updated on new books and facilitates e-mail contact between Antoine Vanner and his readers for discussion of issues arising. Suggestions and constructive comments are always welcome and all emails are replied to. Free short stories, as above and available only to those on the list, will also appear at intervals.