The Captain from Connecticut

[citation needed] Captain Josiah Peabody, United States Navy, in command of the USS Delaware, is the viewpoint character.

In the course of action, off the weather shore of Martinique, Delaware encounters the frigate HMS Calypso, Sir Hugh Davenant, commanding, accompanied by two smaller ships.

Davenant, a man of hot-tempered speech, insists he sail first, because he cannot allow the Americans a free hand at sea; to do so would lead to his court-martial.

Unfortunately, his young brother, who hates the rigid discipline of naval life, deserts the ship and marries a wealthy French widow.

Both sides accept a temporary agreement to work together to eliminate a pirate who is plaguing local commerce under the assumption neither frigate can chase him.

Peabody then challenges Davenant to a ship-to-ship duel, as the only way the Delaware can be free to take action against a British convoy forming to attack New Orleans.

Beverly Britton wrote in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the book "has enough virility and swift, sudden danger about it to make it more than acceptable as a top-drawer novel in ordinary circumstances ... but coming as it does from Forester's pen it seems a bit too calm, and somehow lacking in the good red-blooded qualities that made 'Hornblower' so uniquely compelling".

[2] Ralph Thompson wrote in The New York Times that he wished he "could write a hymn in praise of Forester, or at least hang out a few flags in honor of his latest historical novel ... his seagoing yarns ... have always been good, but to come upon 'The Captain from Connecticut' in a season spotted with some of the worst historical fiction since the days of the late Lydia Maria Child is like finding a bottle of brandy in a carton of sweet coal-tar-dye soda pop".