By 1809 the Indian Ocean was the final battleground for Nelson's Navy and the French fleet. At stake was Britain's commercial lifeline to India - and its strategic capacity to wage war in Europe. In one fatal season, the natural order of maritime power since Trafalgar was destroyed. Storm and Conquest brings together the terrifying ordeal of men, women and children caught at sea in hurricanes, and those who survived to drive the French from the Eastern Seas. All shared a need to prove themselves - to make a career, or a fortune, or a marriage - in places which could be at once magnificent and terrifying.

The drama of Stephen Taylor's masterful narrative is irresistible; his true stories more than a match for the novels of Patrick O'Brian. And he provides a meticulously researched, searing portrait of the British captains whose zeal and ambition was such that they would rather die than capitulate.