CORRIE's WAR * Book 1 * PRESS GANG!

Corrie's War * Part 1 * PRESS GANG!

Corrie's War • Book 1

PRESS

GANG!

Battle, Sweat And Glory In Nelson's Navy!

Anthony Barton

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

PRESS GANG! is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons alive or dead is coincidental. PRESS GANG! contains some material previously published under the title 'Midshipman Harriman.'

Bulmer Press Mass Market E-Book Edition

Cover design by NZ Graphics.

Copyright Anthony Barton, 2018

All rights reserved.

All honor to 'CORRIE'S WAR'

'If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.'

... Napoleon Bonaparte

'I have only one eye, I have a right to be blind sometimes.'

... Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson

'Life is ours to be spent. Not to be saved."

... D.H. Lawrence

'When a very small child I used to pray every night that I might wake up in the morning and find myself a boy.'

... Captain Flora Sandes

'And dost thou ask what fairy has inspired a nymph to be with martial glory fired?'

... Deborah Gannett

WELCOMING WORDS

Thanks so much for buying this book in the series CORRIE'S WAR! We owe so much to fighting women. I have to thank my mother Marjorie who sent coded signals to His Majesty's ships out in the Atlantic warning them of U-boats from her W.R.N.S. operator's station during the Second World War, and my father Harry who served as a captain in H.M.S. Tiger.

Brave women like Corrie served in Nelson's navy, and I am indebted Julie Wheelwright for her excellent research into the matter in Amazons and Military Maids, Women who Dressed as Men in Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness.

A million thanks to my brilliant partner Dr. Fredeswinda Chua who gave me unremitting support while never ceasing to care for her patients, and to my historian friends Alan and Hilary Cass for reading though my manuscript and provided wise and knowledgeable advice about what life must have been like for Corrie in the frigate Swift.

I write my sea stories in a house perched on a clifftop. A moment ago, I heard a whale come up for air. The sea is loud today, breaking on the shore. Corrie Harriman would have heard the waves breaking on the shore on the night when the press gang came for her...

INTRODUCTION: CORRIE'S SECRET PLAN

CORRIE's first memory was one of horror. She was too young to understand what water was. She had no idea why the water was trying to kill her. She just knew that something stupendously wrong was happening. She couldn't breathe properly. The water stuff kept getting in her mouth and stopping everything. A healthy and sensible child, she tried to solve the problem by thrashing about, kicking with her arms and legs. This did not help. In fact, it made things worse. The bishop's gardener had protected the goldfish in the ornamental pond with an arrangement of wires intended to discourage the cormorants from preying upon the fishes, and Corrie was trapped among the gardener's wires. For how long she struggled before her cries for help were answered by her governess, she never knew. Small children have no measured sense of time, being unable to count. She emerged from the ordeal deeply furious.