An Eye of the Fleet

Author's Note

The major incidents in this novel are matters of historical fact. Some of the peripheral characters, such as Admirals Kempenfelt and Arbuthnot, Captain Calvert, Jonathan Poulter and Wilfred Collingwood are also factual and the personalities, as depicted, tally with the images they have left later generations.

The exploits of Cyclops, though fictional, are both nautically and politically within the bounds of possibility. The continental currency of Congress was indeed worthless to the extent of almost ruining the Revolution. Fighting in the Carolinas and Georgia was characterised by atrocities, though the Galuda River does not exist.

No nautical claim has been made which was impossible. The details of the Moonlight Battle, for instance, can be verified from other sources, though the actual capture of Santa Teresa is Cyclops's own 'part' in the action.

Pains have been taken over the accuracy of facts concerning the life on board men-of-war during the American War of Independence and pedants may like to note that at the time Drinkwater went to sea commissioned officers messed in the gunroom, midshipmen and master's mates in the cockpit. By the beginning of the next century the latter occupied the gunroom with the warrant officer gunner exercising a sort of parental authority and schoolmasters appointed to attempt the education of the 'young gentlemen'. By this time the officers had a grander 'wardroom'.