Mediterranean Madness (book 3 of 9 of the Rundel Series)

This novel is set during the Napoleonic Wars. Benjamin Rundel fights in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent after a nerve-wracking sail through the French fleet in the fog. He suffers at the hands of a loud Italian lady whom he has been sent to rescue from her French paramours. Her children nearly drive his entire crew crazy. He is there when Commodore Horatio Nelson loses his right arm in battle at Tenerife and later becomes his scribe. He and his crew are captured when their ship is driven ashore during a severe storm. He manages to get them out of the prison and back to their original ship. When his captain panics at the Battle of Camperdown, as first Leftenant, Ben is forced to take over the ship. He fears a court martial and charges of mutiny. Fortunately he is exonerated. Then the captain’s influential family gets him assigned to a mutinous ship. He escapes and survives hardships in the jungle but lives to fight at the Battle of Aboukir Bay. Ben learns about the nobility and politics of Naples during his long stay there with Lord Nelson. The Admiralty sends him off to Egypt to contact two missing informants, but he fails to find them. The explosion of the giant ship, L’Orient, during the Battle of the Nile must have been a spectacle that could never be forgotten for its magnificence and horror.