The Wolf and the Shipmaster's Daughter - Violet Davey

Caribbean Sea, June 1656

On a windless night, the slave ship Providence is taken by the 30-gun frigate Sea Wolf. Her captain, Ambrose Draycott, is an English exile striking at Puritan expansion in the West Indies.

Among the captives is Eleanor Harcourt, bound for Jamaica and an arranged marriage. She claims sanctuary and binds her fate to the ship, a choice that will shape a bloodline for three centuries.

Driven from England by Cromwell's rise, Draycott commands under sworn Articles. The ship runs on discipline. Years earlier, he and his officers defied an ancient monstrous sea power and were condemned by it. Now they carry a curse that binds wolf and man in the same flesh. The first turning kills many, leaving the crew undermanned and forcing brutal decisions to keep her seaworthy.

From Moby-Dick to Treasure Island to The Terror, sailors have never sailed without superstition and shadow close behind. Here, command, seamanship, and political consequence stand beside the monstrous without apology.

Draycott is hunted as a traitor to a kingless England. Eleanor is hunted for defying the contract arranged for her. As Parliament tightens its grip and rival frigates close the Passage, survival, inheritance, and leadership converge at sea.

The Wolf and the Shipmaster's Daughter stands as the foundation of both the Draycott Bloodline Saga and The Wolves of the West Indies short fiction cycle. The generational saga spans thirteen volumes and three centuries, carrying the Draycott line from the seventeenth century to the Atlantic war of the twentieth. The short fiction cycle returns to the volatile years immediately following the opening novel, moving through covert work in service of the King's restoration, sea battles and blockades, fleet and camp building, and the lives of other crew members, while bringing the hidden supernatural order of the same world into sharper focus.