The following bibliography of books written by Douglas Reeman is listed in the order in which they were published.
 A
Prayer for the Ship FP 1958 NORTH SEA, 1940s ... Memories are short
on HMS Royston - they have to be. As mother ship to a battered, war-torn bunch of MTBs she must carry out her vital role whatever the conditions, whatever the risks. Sub-Lieutenant Royce's predecessor has only been dead forty-eight hours, and already the crew has forgotten him. Now with only three months sea-experience behind him, Royce must learn the job the hard way - in the tough school of combat.
 High
Water FP 1959 POST WORLD WAR II ... With his own boat, the motor-yacht Seafox, former naval officer Philip Vivian had hoped to earn a living free from the petty restrictions of everyday life, close to the sea he loved. Now, however, his dream is threatened by financial difficulties. So when a profitable - if legally dubious - proposition is put to him by an old naval comrade-in-arms, Vivian is willing to listen. But what starts out as a harmless adventure soon turns into something altogether more sinister. And Vivian finds himself trapped in a treacherous web of violence and crime, dangerously torn between his stubborn sense of past loyalties and his duty to a society he has always despised.
 Send
a Gunboat FP 1960 HONG KONG, 1950s ... HMS Wagtail: river gunboat. A ship seemingly at the end of her useful life, lying in Hong Kong dockyard, awaiting her last summons to the breakers' yard. Commander Justin Rolfe: also seemingly at the end of his useful naval life. An embittered man, brooding and angry from a court-martial verdict. Then the offshore island of Santu is threatened with invasion from the Chinese mainland. On the island: a small British community that must be brought out. Commander Rolfe and the Wagtail are ordered to the island. The job is regarded with sullen resentment by his crew, but to Rolfe, and even the ship, it is a job that offers the chance of a reprieve and a restoration of self respect.
 Dive
in the Sun FP 1961 ADRIATIC, 1940s ... Curtis was the pro. He could steer a sub through a saloon and no one would notice. Duncan was the grumbler, more at home in the Aussie Outback than twenty fathoms under the Adriatic. Jervis was the spit-and-polish man, who knew the correct way to die. And George, the Cockney, was the toughest of them all. Four men in the Royal Navy's smallest sub, preparing the way for history's largest invasion. They had three tasks: slip into a closely guarded harbour, attach a time-charge to the Jerries' biggest dry-dock, and escape with their lives if possible. The first two tasks were orders. The third was optional.
 The
Hostile Shore FP 1962 SOUTH CHINA SEA, 1960s ... The Sigli had been just an old passenger launch, but when the Japanese invaded Singapore during World War II everything that could float was pressed into service. And so, crammed with refugees, harried and bombed by enemy planes, the Sigli had struggled south in a desperate attempt to escape. Rupert Blair's family had been among the passengers on that fateful journey in which the ship and all aboard had disappeared. Twenty years later, Blair still hasn't forgotten - has never abandoned his obsession to discover exactly what had happened. Now Rupert Blair embarks upon a journey of his own - one that will take him to a primitive, savage island in search of the truth.
The
Last Raider FP 1963 KIEL, DECEMBER 1917 ... The Vulkan sailed from Kiel. She was a German commerce raider. The last raider. First of all she had to break through the British blockade. Then, striking west and south to theseas, to sink and destroy every ship, every cargo before it could be delivered to the enemies of the Fatherland. At this stage of the war, Germany needed a gesture and the Vulkan was to be that gesture. There had been other raiders, but unlike those earlier predecessors, she would be alone with every man's hand against her. And to Korvetten Kapitän Felix von Steiger fell the duty of making this voyage possible.
 With
Blood and Iron FP 1965 JANUARY 1944 ... On the vast grey waters of the Atlantic the balance of power has shifted. For Rudolf Steiger, ace U-boat commander, there is a new sense of urgency. Dedicated, ruthless, fanatical, he has become a legend in his own time, a symbol of Germany's greatness. But now, as he takes the U-boat flotilla, Meteor, out into the bitter winter seas, he faces a new and deadly enemy - his own nagging doubts about the outcome of the war. Steiger knows that his destiny may be to court heroic death rather than suffer ignominious defeat.
 HMS
Saracen FP 1965 MALTA, 1941 ... To most people HMS Saracen is just an ugly, obsolete ship with an equally ugly recent history: her last commander is due for court martial after shelling the troops he was sent to protect. But to Captain Richard Chesnaye she brings back memories -- memories of the First World War when he and the old monitor went through the Gallipoli campaign together. It seems that captain and ship are both past their best. But as the war enters a new phase Chesnaye senses the possibility of a fresh, significant role - for him and the Saracen.
 Path
of the Storm FP 1966 HONG KONG, 1960s ... The old submarine-chaser USS Hibiscus, re-fitting in a Hong Kong dockyard before being handed over to the Nationalist Chinese, is suddenly ordered to the desolate island group of Payenhau. For Captain Mark Gunnar - driven by the memory of his torture at the hands of Viet Cong guerillas - the new command is a chance to even the score against a ruthless, unrelenting enemy. But Payenhau is very different from his expectations, and as the weather worsens a crisis develops that Gunnar must face alone.
The Deep Silence FP 1967 MARCH, 1967 ... HMS Temeraire, latest and most advanced of Britains nuclear submarines. When Temeraire's trials are cut short and she is ordered to the Far East to reinforce the fleet against a threat from Red China, her captain, David Jermain, knows that this is no routine exercise in flag waving.And once in Asian waters he nad his submarine find themselves involved in a hidden undeclared conflict beneath the sea. While the politicians haggle over a situation which could hold the seeds of a full-scale war, Commander Jermain must keep his faith in himself and his new ship's potential - even when ordered to take the Temeraire to the edge
of a catastrophe.
 The
Pride and the Anguish FP 1968 SINGAPORE, NOVEMBER 1941 ... They called it the "Gibraltar of the Far East" - a British rock that could not be taken. But suddenly, in a lightning blow, Singapore is defeated. Call it incompetence or call it false pride. It doesn't really matter. The warplanes of the Rising Sun command the skies. And two officers on a battered gunboat are all that is left of England's Empire in the East!
 To
Risks Unknown FP 1969 ADRIATIC, 1943 ... The Navy's Special Operations Forces had received the word from the high command: from now on, there would be no retreat. For the men of the HMS Thistle it meant a new kind of war - a war of stealth and cunning far beyond enemy lines. The Thistle was a battlewise corvette, drafted for secret strikes in the Nazi-bound Adriatic. No matter that half her crew were green boys and the other half hardtack misfits. In war, no one cared about the past - only the future - what men could wrest from their guns and the sea.
 The
Greatest Enemy FP 1970 GULF
OF THAILAND, 1969... Twenty-five years ago HMS Terrapin was part of a crack hunter/killer group in the Battle of the Atlantic. Now she is working out her last commission in the Gulf of Thailand. To Lieutenant-Commander Standish, the frigate seems to mark the end of his hopes of a career in the Navy. Then a new captain arrives, a man driven by an old-fashioned, almost obsessive patriotism. And under his stubborn leadership Standish and the crew discover a long-forgotten unity of purpose.
 Rendezvous-South
Atlantic FP 1972 ATLANTIC, 1941 ... She was a battered merchant cruiser, decked out in a new coat of paint and a few ancient guns. Her patrol: Iceland. Her crew: a roster of has-beens, with an admiral of faded glory. But in the killing ground of the Atlantic, Nazi U-boats ran swift and deadly. The Benbecula's men knew this war of nerves and tossing ice caps was a game you couldn't afford to lose. And for one more brave, impossible hour they had to play the odds of battle and the sea.
 His
Majesty's U-Boat or
Go in and Sink! FP 1973 FEBRUARY
1943... Europe is wracked by the fiercest fighting of the Second World War. Lieutenant-Commander Steven Marshall brings his submarine, sole survivor of a flotilla decimated in Mediterranean waters, back to Britain. There he assumes command of a captured German U-boat and returns to the Mediterranean, to pose as a German ship and crew. The Royal Navy is unaware of the spy ship's true identity and suspense builds to unbearable levels as Commander Marshall threads his way among potential destroyers on both sides, to annihilate enemy installations and to sabotage an Italian factory at work on secret weapons threatening the Allied invasion.
 The Destroyers FP 1974 JUNE 1943 ... The eight destroyers had seen just about every kind of action since they were originally built to fight the Kaiser's navy. To help pave the way for the Allied invasion, the veteran ships were transferred to Special Operations and sent to the icy North Atlantic. Were they picked for their fighting experience - or because they were expendable? Either way, Lieutenant Commander Keith Drummond, captain of the destroyer Warlock,
was determined to guide the old ships to their final glory.
 Winged
Escort FP 1975 SUMMER 1943 ... As the grim years of the Second World War go by, the destruction of Allied shipping mounts. Out of the terrible loss of men and ships, the escort carrier is born. At twenty-six, fighter pilot Tim Rowan, RNVR, is already a veteran of many campaigns. Now he joins the escort carrier, Growler, a posting which takes him
first to the bitter waters of the Arctic and all the misery of convoy duty
to Murmansk, and then south to the Indian Ocean and the strange new terror
of the Japanese Kamikaze.
 Surface
with Daring FP 1976 NORWEGIAN COAST, 1940S ... Hiding, lying in wait on the sea bed, is EX 16, one of the most important ships in the Royal Navy. She's not much to look at, and she's only 54 feet long, with no defensive armament. But her four-man crew knows that the outcome of the war could depend on this midget submarine. Seaton, her commander, understands what his men face. There is the boredom, the discomfort, the jealousy and bickering; and already they have confronted enormous dangers on desperate raids into Norway. Now, poised for the attack on a secret Nazi rocket installation, Seaton must hold his crew together for the hell that await them.
 Strike
From the Sea FP 1978 STRAITS OF BORNEO, 1941 ... Soufrière. The beast. She was the largest submarine in the world, an undersea cruiser with twin turret guns, her own spotter plane, and forty 'fish' in her tubes. She was French, but in 1941 Hitler's legions held Paris. Ainslie's men were the hand-picked best of the Royal Navy and de Gaulle's Free French, shuddering through the straits of Borneo, steaming for the lagoon where Soufrière
lay
hidden. Their job: seize her.
 A
Ship Must Die FP 1979 JANUARY 1944 ... When the British light cruiser Andromeda arrives at Williamstown naval dockyard to be handed over to the Royal Australian Navy, she is already a legend - having earned her young captain, Richard Blake, the Victoria Cross in her last victory against overwhelming odds in the Mediterranean. Blake has grown to love Andromeda and has few regrets when he is unexpectedly told to retain his command with a British and Australian ship's company. At this crucial time of the war, with the Allies advancing on almost every front, comes the startling news that a heavily armed German commerce raider is at large in the vast sea area of the Indian Ocean, stalking supply ships and destroying any vessel reckless enough to sail unescorted. As the toll of lives and ships mounts, Blake, his experience and reputation matched against those of an equally skilful enemy, is ordered to seek out and destroy the raider - the ship which must die.
 Torpedo
Run FP 1981 BLACK SEA, 1943 ... The Russians were fighting a desperate battle to regain control. But their one real weakness was on the water: whatever they did, the Germans did it better, and the daring hit-and-run tactics of the E-boats plagued them. At last the British agreed to send them a small flotilla of motor torpedo boats under the command of John Devane. Devane had been in the Navy since the outbreak of war. More than a veteran, he was a survivor - and the two rarely went together in the savage war of MTBs. Given command at short notice, Devane soon learned that, even against the vast and raging background of the Eastern Front, war could still be a personal duel between individuals.
 Badge
of Glory FP 1982 AFRICA, 1850 ... This is the first book in the Blackwood saga. It has been more than forty years after slaveholding and slave trading became illegal for British subjects. With slavery still flourishing, Captain Philip Blackwood and his Royal Marines have received orders to sail to West Africa on a dangerous mission - against incredible odds, he and his charges must eliminate the strongholds of slavery in this treacherous territory. When Captain Blackwood rejoins his ship, HMS Audacious, it is peacetime, and although sometimes engaged in small overseas campaigns, the world's mightiest navy has settled into a routine of tradition and ceremonial. With the coming of the steam age many younger officers are pressing for change and modernisation, whereas their superiors for the most part see coal-fired ships as a challenge to their own power. Captain Blackwood soon discovers there is more to leading his men than holding firm in the line of battle. Love, hate, ambition, and envy are forces with which he must contend. In the heat of Africa, and later in the bitter Crimean War, these obstacles become an even greater threat than the enemy to the success of the campaigns.
 The
First to Land FP 1984 CHINA, 1900 ... This is the second book in the Blackwood saga. Captain David Blackwood, at twenty-seven, is already a hero of the Royal Marines Light Infantry and holds England's highest award for valour, the Victoria Cross. Nevertheless, he has yet to discover the ultimate in passion, courage, or fear. These he will experience in the bloody battles of the Boxer Rebellion. Blackwood's detachment is among the first to meet the fanatically cruel Chinese, roused to a frenzy of hatred for the "foreign devils" by their Empress Dowager. During one of the initial clashes between the British and the Chinese, the Marines rescue a German countess from whom Blackwood will learn some of life's less violent lessons. The detachment is ordered to escort her on a treacherous journey up the narrow Hoshun River under heavy fire. Blackwood arrives at his destination only to find that it has been burned and looted, and he is forced to turn back. Even the harrowing return trip pales, however, beside the task he faces on reaching Tientsin - to command a handful of men against wave after wave of suicidal attacks.
 The
Volunteers FP 1985 SICILY, 1943 ... They were the men and women of the Royal Navy's Special Operations units. Carrying out lightning raids on hostile coasts, they became a navy within a navy - each hand-picked for their individual skills, and all of them courageous. Against the mighty backdrop of World War II they performed their small but deadly operations - living often beyond hope, sometimes beyond mercy.
 The
Iron Pirate FP 1986 SUMMER 1944 ... She had preyed for years on the defenseless merchant marine of every nation passing through the Baltic, a cruel outlaw scourge, flying the broken cross instead of a skull and bones. Now the Nazi heavy cruiser Prinz Luitpold is herself on the run - and fighting for her life in a desperate race across the vast killing ground of the Atlantic. Captain Dieter Hechler is forced to withdraw from the waters he dominated for years - under heavy fire. Whipped by gale-force winds and a fierce barrage of armor-piercing shells, the once-proud Prinz
cannot escape unscarred. The target of underwater assassins, air assault, and a relentless pursuit by a vengeful Allied fleet, Hechler has given up on victory. His only hope is to survive.
 In Danger's Hour FP 1989 MEDITERRANEAN, 1943 ... The Rob Roy. A tiny machine, just 230 feet from stem to stern. In peacetime she would have trawled for cod. Now her catch is deadlier by far. Lieutenant-Commander Ian Ransome is a veteran of the treacherous front line of naval combat. For three years, he's swept the explosive curtains of Nazi mines that shrouds the British Isles. Now, under sealed orders in the battle-tossed waters of the Mediterranean, he and his jack-tired crew face one final test of their courage and seamanship under fire. Their secret mission: to spearhead the Allies' desperate invasion of Italy.
 The
White Guns FP 1989 KIEL HARBOUR, 1945 ... The war in Europe is at an end. But for Lieutenant Vere Marriott and the men of MGB 801, moored amid a nightmare of devastation, it is an uneasy, unsettled peace. New assignments ashore and afloat mean fresh tensions and conflicting emotions. For some, glory now takes second place to profit. For others, revenge at last seems within their grasp. No one is shooting at Marriott now. But dangers come thick and fast - from confrontation with the Russians to his feelings for Fräulein Geghin. There is more to victory than survival.
 Killing
Ground FP 1992 WESTERN OCEAN, 1942 ... From the bridge of HMS Gladiator, Lieutenant-Commander David Howard's orders were chillingly clear. There could be no mercy. To the men who fought to protect the vital, threatened Merchant Navy convoys in the Western Approaches, the Battle of the Atlantic was a full-scale war. A relentless, savage war against an ever-present enemy and a violent sea - in an arena known only to its embittered survivors as the killing ground. HMS Gladiator was part of that war. An ordinary, hard-worked destroyer and her company of men. Fighting for survival in a war with no rules.
 The
Horizon FP 1993 1914-1918 ... This is the third book in the Blackwood saga. For three generations, members of the Blackwood family served the Royal Marines with distinction. With the outbreak of World War I, at last comes Jonathan Blackwood's turn to carry the family name into battle. But as the young marines embark for the Dardanelles, and a new kind of warfare, it dawns on them that the days of scarlet coats and an unchanging tradition of honour and glory have gone forever. First in Gallipoli, and two years later at Flanders, comes their horrifying initiation into a wholesale slaughter for which no training could ever have prepared them. Caught up in the savagery of a conflict beyond any officer's control, Blackwood's future rests on the 'horizon' - the dark lip of the trench which was the last fateful sight for so many.
 Sunset
FP June 1995 HONG KONG, 1941 ... To the residents and defence forces of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong, the war in Europe remains remote. Even the massive build-up of Japanese forces on the Chinese border cannot dent their carefree optimism. Yet one man suspects the truth. Lieutenant-Commander Esmond Brooke, captain of HMS Serpent and a veteran of the cruel Atlantic, sees all too clearly the folly and incompetence of Hong Kong's colonial administration. To Brooke, attack by Japan seems inevitable. But, in war, there will always be some who attempt the impossible, even in the face of death. This is the story of one ship in her company who refuse to accept the anguish of defeat and surrender to a merciless enemy.
 A
Dawn Like Thunder FP 1996 BURMESE COAST, 1944 ... After four years, the tide of war is turning in North Africa and Europe. The conflict in Southeast Asia, however, has reached new heights of savagery, and Operation Monsun poses a sinister threat to the hope of allied victory. The Special Operations mission off the Burmese coast requires volunteers. Men with nothing to live for, or men with everything to lose. Men like Lieutenant James Ross, awarded the Victoria Cross for his work in underwater sabotage, or the desperate amateur Charles Villiers, heir to a fortune now controlled by the Japanese. The two-man torpedo - the chariot - is the ultimate weapon in a high-risk war. Cast loose into the shadows before an eastern dawn, the heroes or madmen who guide it will strike terror into the heart of an invulnerable enemy, or pay the ultimate price for failure.
 Battlecruiser
FP 1997 JANUARY 1943 ... Of all her class, HMS Reliant and one other have survived. Reliant
has the reputation of a lucky ship but when Captain Guy Sherbrooke joins
her he knows he could be her last captain. As Britain prepares to
invade occupied Europe, Reliant will be thrown head fist into the conflagration. All those who sail in her know that there can be no half measures: only death or glory awaits HMS Reliant.
 Dust
on the Sea FP 1999 1943 ... This is the fourth book in the Blackwood saga. Captain Mike Blackwood, Royal Marine Commando, is a survivor. Young, toughened, and tried in the hellish crucible of Burma, he labours, sometimes faltering, beneath the weight of tradition, the glorious heritage of his family, and the burden of his own self-doubt. For him, the horizon is not the lip of the trench seen by men of the Corps in the previous war, but the ramp of a landing craft smashing down into the sea, and the fire of the enemy on a Sicilian beach. Here, tradition is not enough, and Mike Blackwood must find within himself qualities of leadership which will inspire those Royal Marines who are once again the first to land, and among the first to die.
 For
Valour FP 2000 NORTH ATLANTIC ... Commander Graham Martineau has been awarded the Victoria Cross for pressing home an attack against impossible odds. Few survived the action, and the crimson ribbon remains a haunting symbol of the sacrifice of ship and men. Now, as captain of the crack tribal class destroyer HMS Hakka, Martineau must once again call from ordinary seamen the ultimate in courage, and prepare to defend to the death the vital convoys in the North Atlantic carrying sustenance for survival to Russia. There is no hiding place in these bitter Arctic seas, where a pitiless enemy awaits a final rendezvous.
 Twelve Seconds to Live FP 2002 SECOND WORLD WAR ... The mine is an impartial killer and a lethal challenge to any volunteer in the Special Counter- measures of the Royal Navy. They are brave, lonely men with something to prove or nothing left to lose. Lieutenant-Commander David Masters, haunted by a split-second glimpse of the mine that destroyed his first and only command, His Majesty's Submarine Tornado, now defuses 'the beast' on land and teaches the same deadly science to others who too often die in the attempt. Lieutenant Chris Foley, minelaying off an enemy coast in ML366, rolls on an ineasy sea with a release bracket sheared and a lie mine jammed, and hears the menacing growl of approaching E-boats. And Sub-Lieutenant Michael Lincoln, hailed as a hero, dreads exposure as a coward even more than the unexpected booby-trap, or the gentle whirr of the activated fuse marking the last twelve seconds of his life.
Knife's Edge ... A new Blackwood family novel coming in 2004!
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