Alan Lewrie, KB, BT, is the fictional hero and main character of Dewey Lambdin's naval adventure series of novels set during the American and the French Revolutions and the Napoleonic Wars.
Forester's Horatio Hornblower, Alexander Kent's Richard Bolitho, and Dudley Pope's Lord Ramage are much more in the traditional hero mode in attitudes and upbringing.
His character shares elements of Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey, Bernard Cornwell's Richard Sharpe, George MacDonald Fraser's Harry Flashman, and Henry Fielding's Tom Jones.
With the help of friends, mentors, enemies, villains, and the mention of a god or two, Alan quickly rises through the ranks of the Royal Navy.
He was expelled from Harrow School in 1779 after a prank involving gunpowder went awry resulting in the demolition of a coach house and the faculty stables.
Upon his return to England he is rewarded for his actions by being given command of his own ship, marries, and spends the next three years on the Bahamas Station enforcing the Navigation Acts and suppressing piracy.
During this period he proves his mettle as commander of a warship, makes a powerful enemy, and becomes a father—legitimately for once—following his marriage to Caroline Chiswick, the daughter of a Loyalist family that moved back to England after the American Revolution.
After his ship is repaired and he recovers, he is sent back into the Caribbean to confront Haitian rebels, French privateers, Yellow Fever in his crew, and a band of Acadian pirates from Louisiana.
[3] The second book in the series, The French Admiral, is set during the period August 1781 through January 1782 and covers the Battle of the Capes, the Siege of Yorktown, and the evacuation of Loyalist families from Wilmington, North Carolina.
Through a series of mishaps, Lewrie and two small boatloads of British seamen and Loyalist soldiers avoid the surrender of Lord Cornwallis and rejoin the fleet.
Lewrie fortuitously escapes this unhappy circumstance by being offered the opportunity to test for promotion to lieutenant and then by being one of only a few of the successful applicants to be immediately commissioned.
Lewrie is involved in escorting a British diplomatic mission to bribe Florida Indians to continue their fight against Spain and the new United States.
This novel has Lewrie making his first contact with a British secret agent, Zacariah Twigg, and first crossing swords with an occasional future adversary, Captain Guillaume Choundas of the French Navy.
As a reward for his service in the Far East, Lewrie is given command of a small vessel and dispatched once more to the Caribbean in The Gun Ketch; he also marries Caroline Chiswick.
In the Bahamas, Lewrie experiences the futility of attempting to enforce the Navigation Act and rampant local corruption which turns a blind eye to piracy and shipwrecking.
His actions while escorting a convoy of French Royalists from Toulon to Gibraltar win him a promotion to commander and his big step on the way to status as a post-captain.
[5] Jester's Fortune closes this chapter of history as Lewrie serves in the Adriatic with a small squadron attempting to ensure that Balkan naval stores are not supplied to France.
As a backdrop, Napoleon overruns Italy and forces Admiral John Jervis to abandon the Mediterranean due to a lack of friendly ports.
King's Captain sees Lewrie involved in the Battle of Cape St Vincent just before being promoted to the coveted position of post-captain and given command of a brand new frigate... which he boards on the eve of the Nore Mutiny.
In Sea of Grey, after being wounded at the Battle of Camperdown, Lewrie spends time ashore where his domestic life has disintegrated when Caroline learned of his many infidelities, courtesy of anonymous letters that seem distressingly well-informed about the 'Ram-Cat's' philanderings.
The same arena is still in play for The Captain's Vengeance, where Lewrie embarks on a secret mission to the Spanish port of New Orleans to deal with French Acadian pirates... and finds that one of them is a very attractive and astonishingly liberated young woman.
In the meantime, Lewrie must escort a trade convoy to South Africa, developing a—so far—chaste relationship with a young Russian woman and a ferocious encounter with a marauding French frigate.
Troubled Waters takes things to the spring of 1800, where Lewrie is back in England as a wealthy hero following his cruises with HMS Proteus; but a date in court for the theft of slaves awaits.
Bored and idle, he eventually takes up a relationship with an attractive young prostitute (ending two years of celibacy) while also wrapping up the issue of the anonymous letters.
As the anti-British Neutral League of Denmark, Sweden, Prussia and Russia threatens British interests, the Admiralty puts him in command of another frigate and sends him into the Baltic.
In The Invasion Year, Lewrie becomes (only partially willingly) involved in the evacuation of French civilians from the slave rebellion on Hispaniola before being recalled to England, where he is rewarded for his part in the naval action described at the end of King, Ship, and Sword by being made Knight of the Bath and—shockingly—Baronet.