The Mediterranean, 1943... The HMS Rob Roy. A tiny machine, just 230 feet from stem to stern. In peacetime she would have trawled for cod. Now her catch is deadlier by far. Lieutenant-Commander Ian Ransome is a veteran of the treacherous front line of naval combat. Under sealed orders in the battle-tossed waters of the Mediterranean, he and his jack-tired crew face one final test of their courage....

February 1943. As the balance of the war slowly shifts in Britain's favour, Lieutenant-Commander Steven Marshall brings his battle-scarred submarine into home port. Captain and crew are exhausted after 14 months' continuous service, but for most there can be no thought of leave. If the enemy collapse in North Africa is to be exploited, every experienced man will be needed. Marshall must return to the Mediterranean, but this time to a very different kind of war.

Twenty-five years ago HMS Terrapin was part of a crack hunter/killer group in the Battle of the Atlantic. Now she is working out her last commission in the Gulf of Thailand. To Lieutenant-Commander Standish, the frigate seems to mark the end of his hopes of a career in the navy. Then a new captain arrives, a man driven by an old-fashioned, almost obsessive patriotism. And under his stubborn leadership, Standish and the crew discover a long-forgotten unity of purpose.

It was in 1943. On the Black Sea, the Russians were fighting a desperate battle to regain control. But the Russians’ one real weakness was on the water: whatever they did, the Germans did it better, and the daring hit-and-run tactics of the E-boats plagued them. At last the British agreed to send them a small flotilla of motor torpedo boats under the command of John Devane. Devane had been in the Navy since the outbreak of war.

In 1941, when she was turned into an armed merchant cruiser, the SS Benbecula was already old. Yet even she was needed to protect the vital Atlantic sea lanes. Commander Lindsay, her new captain, had to work desperately to mould the ship’s company - raw recruits and old-timers - into a fighting force. And better than anyone, Lindsay knew this could be his last command, his last chance.

The year: 1943. Now there was to be no more retreat for Britain and her Allies. At last the war was to be carried into enemy territory. And from captured bases and makeshift harbours in North Africa, the Royal Navy's Special Force was to be the probe and the spearhead of the advance. To this unorthodox war came the corvette H. M. S. Thistle and her commanding officer, John Crispin.

January, 1944. When the British light cruiser Andromeda arrives at Williamstown naval dockyard to be handed over to the Royal Australian Navy, she is already a legend - having earned her young captain, Richard Blake, the Victoria Cross in her last victory against overwhelming odds in the Mediterranean. Blake has grown to love Andromeda, so has few regrets when he is unexpectedly told to retain his command with a British and Australian ship’s company.

December 7, 1941 - America is attacked by the Japanese and dragged into a worldwide struggle for power unlike anything ever seen on Earth. While the United States and the Navy reel from the devastation of Pearl Harbor, the Nazis begin a brutal campaign within sight of the shores of the nation. U-boats prowl the American coast from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, sinking shipping seemingly unopposed!

A Navy captain near the end of a decorated career, Stephen Rensselaer is disciplined, intelligent, and determined always to do what’s right. In defending the development of a new variant of warship, he makes an enemy of the president of the United States, who assigns him to command the doomed line’s only prototype­—Athena, Patrol Coastal 15­­—with the intent to humiliate a man who should have been an admiral. Rather than resign, Rensselaer takes the new assignment in stride.

When Captain Guy Sherbrooke joins HMS Reliant in 1943, he knows he may be her last Captain. Sister battleships have been destroyed, and Sherbrooke cannot alter the bitter truth that there will be no half measures for HMS Reliant.