Chris Durbin

The wealth of the world flows through the narrow straits between oceans and seas. Gibraltar, Magellan, Hormuz, Dover, Malacca: each has had its day. Yet there is one that has lingered in the imagination of geographers and fantasists, of admirals and money-hungry merchants since Columbus crossed...

It is the summer of 1760 and the British navy reigns supreme on the oceans of the world; only in the Mediterranean is its mastery still seriously challenged. Admiral Saunders is sent with a squadron of ships-of-the-line to remind those nations that are still neutral of the consequences of siding...

Fort Niagara is the key to the American continent. Whoever owns that lonely outpost at the edge of civilisation controls the entire Great Lakes region. Pitt’s grand strategy for 1759 is to launch a three-pronged attack on Canada....

With the fall of Louisbourg in 1758, the French in North America were firmly on the back foot. Pitt’s grand strategy for 1759 was to launch a three-pronged attack on Canada. One army would move north from Lake Champlain, and another smaller force would strike across the wilderness to Lake...

Amphibious warfare was in its infancy in the mid-18th century–it was the poor relation of the great fleet actions that the navy so loved.... That all changed in 1758 when the British government demanded a campaign of raids on the French Channel ports. Command arrangements were hastily devised...

The French called it La Forteresse Maudite, the Cursed Fortress. Louisbourg stood at the mouth of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, massive and impregnable, a permanent provocation to the British colonies....

It is 1758, and the Seven Years War is at its height. The Duke of Cumberland’s Hanoverian army has been pushed back to the river Elbe while the French are using the medieval fortified city of Emden to resupply their army and to anchor its left flank. George Holbrooke has recently returned...

A Spanish colonial governor and his family are pursued through the Caribbean by a pair of mysterious ships. The British frigate Medina rescues the governor from his hurricane-wrecked ship, leading Captain Edward Carlisle and first lieutenant George Holbrooke into a web of intrigue....

In late 1756, as the British government collapses in the aftermath of the loss of Minorca, and the country and navy are thrown into political chaos, a small force of ships is sent to the West Indies to reinforce the Leeward Islands Squadron. Captain Edward Carlisle, a native of Virginia, and his...

The Western Mediterranean, 1756. An uneasy peace is about to be shattered as France's greatest living general prepares an invasion force in Toulon, but where is it bound? Captain Carlisle hails from Virginia, a loyal colony of the British Crown. As the clouds of war gather, Carlisle's small...

When, near the end of the Seven Years War, Edward Carlisle’s ship Dartmouth was lost on the shoals inside Cape Henry, he envisaged himself settling down to the life of a wealthy gentleman in Virginia’s capital, Williamsburg, with his wife Chiara.

When Spain joined the Seven Years War on the side of France, one of its aims was to conquer Britain’s ally, Portugal. They launched three separate land invasions, each of them ultimately unsuccessful, but each a deadly, existential threat to their neighbour. Portugal, meanwhile, was determined...

By late 1759 it is clear that France is losing the Seven Years War. In a desperate gamble, the French Atlantic and Mediterranean fleets combine to dominate the Channel and cover a landing in the south of England, but they are annihilated by Admiral Hawke at Quiberon Bay. Meanwhile, a...

It is 1761. The British prime minister, William Pitt, is faced with the need to relieve French pressure on Hanover. He is against sending more British regiments to the continent and instead decides to draw the French army away from Germany by a repeat of the descents on the French coast that he...

In 1761, the cousins King Louis of France and King Charles of Spain agreed in secret that Spain would enter the war against Britain by spring of the following year. Edward Carlisle’s ship of the line Dartmouth is sent from Jamaica on what looks like a trivial mission intended to demonstrate...

Britain’s response was fast and decisive when Spain joined the Seven Years War on the side of France. Guarded by a naval battle squadron, regiments drawn from Britain, the American colonies, and the garrisons of captured French islands were sent to lay siege to Havana. With Havana in British...

North America’s French and Indian War may be over, but at the end of 1760 the wider Seven Years War is still raging in Europe and across the seas of the world. Nevertheless, the New England merchants are growing restless at the restrictions on their trade with the French islands, and one Rhode...

Even before Spain joined the war in early 1762, it was obvious that it wouldn’t have the strategic effect that the cousins, King Louis and King Charles, had hoped.