Disaster at Penobscot Bay
A Novel of the American Revolution

About this book:

The smell of green oak and salt air rises from every page of *Disaster at Penobscot Bay*, plunging you into the sweat-soaked reality of the Revolution's most catastrophic naval failure. Nineteen-year-old shipwright William Cobb trades his broadaxe for a berth aboard the flagship *Warren*, lured by thirty silver dollars a month and the promise of glory. Instead, he finds a fleet crippled by divided command, a commodore who refuses to fight, and seven hundred Redcoats digging in atop the cliffs of Bagaduce. As the expedition unravels in a fog of hesitation and ego, William's fight shifts from building ships to surviving their destruction—dodging splinters the length of a man's arm, scrambling through a burning fleet, and finally fleeing two hundred miles through trackless wilderness as the Royal Navy closes the trap.

Meticulously researched and viscerally rendered, this is not the sanitized Revolution of textbooks but the war as lived by the men who caulked the seams, hauled the guns, and paid the price for their officers' pride. From the shipyards of Newburyport to the smoking ruins of the Penobscot River, *Disaster at Penobscot Bay* delivers a masterclass in historical fiction: authentic in its nautical detail, unflinching in its combat, and unforgettable in its portrait of a young craftsman forced to measure his own worth against the wreckage of ambition.