Although Bartholomew Hoare has acquitted himself nobly on shipnboard and battle, and worked his way up to lieutenant in king George III's Royal Navy, he cannot count his present life a satisfactory one. For one thing, he and his brother (as his father before him, all of them descended from Vikings) have always had to use their fists to defend their name and its implications from schoolboys, shipmates, and generally impolite Britons at every social level. That Bartholomew can handle. But a spent musket ball in the throat put a halt to a promising career at sea, and Hoare was left with a glowing recommendation and exclusively shore duties. Obviously, a captain whose orders could not be issues above a whisper could never command a ship.