Man of War

Few biographies have caught more of the spirit and colour of the age of Charles II than this life of Sir Robert Holmes. Adventurous, energetic, combative and unscrupulous, Robert Holmes first attracted the attention of Prince Rupert as a young cavalry officer in the Civil War. As a Royalist exile, he accompanied the Prince first into the French service and then, in one of the strangest and most romantic episodes in naval history, on a cruise that carried the Royalist colours - no longer flying in England - to Portugal, the Mediterranean, West Africa and the West Indies. After the Restoration, Holmes destroyed, in perhaps the most successful single feat of arms of the century, a great part of the Dutch merchant marine at the cost of barely a dozen casualties. For thirty years he intrigued, manoeuvred and quarrelled with Samuel Pepys over naval matters ending with a mutual respect for their combined contributions to English naval supremacy. Richard Ollard's distinguished account of Robert Holmes and his naval career exhibits the inexhaustible vitality and gusto of the Restoration period.