The Blue Pavilions

Ships fill Harwich harbour in October 1673, and Captain John Barker has returned to a town alive with sailors, soldiers and dockyard work. At the barber's shop, local gossip becomes urgent news when he hears that Mistress Salt is a widow in reduced circumstances. He rushes away with his shave unfinished. Arthur Quiller-Couch builds the opening of this historical novel around the captain's impatient speech and the crowded seaport's smells, sounds and daily business.

Political plans and old naval quarrels complicate the action. Captain Salt receives secret papers and instructions tied to a planned mutiny, while Tristram waits nearby after a royal audience. A Dutch captain then asks the young man to carry a challenge to Captain Jeremiah Runacles, recalling a confrontation in which a boot flew between their ships. The combination of comic exchanges, personal loyalty and court intrigue gives readers several ways into this story of seventeenth-century naval life.