The Bombay Marines
by Porter Hill
The Bombay Marines are the East India Company’s private fighting ships, defending India’s coast and naval trading routes. Captain Adam Horne is the commander of history’s first naval commandos and a hero in the mould of Hornblower, Alexander Kent’s Bolitho or Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin. In this, the first part of the Adam Horne trilogy, it is 1761, and Pondicherry, the last stronghold of the French in India, has fallen to the British. In a novel that ‘Lloyd’s List’ described as “everything a good yarn should have” Captain Horne is given a secret mission: to capture the defeated French commander, Thomas Lally, from the prison of Fort St. George on Madras – if he fails his unit will be disbanded. When most of the Bombay Marines are deployed on the east coast of India Horne finds his unit is left undermanned. Horne is left with only one choice: to take his pick of the motley collection of thieves, rapists...