Gripping New Novel, Cape Corse By Paul Weston, Continues Our Fascination With Napoleon Bonaparte

On The Table Read Magazine, “the best book magazine in the UK“, in Cape Corse by Paul Weston, Royal Navy Lieutenant Snowden and his crew undertake a dangerous and complex mission on Corsica to play their part in Napoleon Bonaparte’s eventual downfall.

Cape Corse

Paul Weston’s third historical novel, Cape Corse, puts Napoleon Bonaparte in centre stage, set as it is, on the island of his birth. A fast moving, historically accurate and complex novel, Cape Corse evokes the era of the Napoleonic wars, set as they were against the background of scientific progress and the nascent Industrial Revolution.

Britain is at war with Napoleonic France, and Lieutenant Snowden RN is sent to Bermuda to commission a fast cedar built schooner, Oleander. In the Mediterranean, the short lived Corsican Republic has been defeated by the French, and Pasquale Paoli, the Republic’s leader, is in exile in London.

Snowden and Oleander are sent to Corsica to support a delicate and dangerous operation which could be of considerable assistance in defeating Bonaparte, with Corsican partisans led by Julia Paoli, daughter of a family whose rivalry with the Bonapartes spans generations.

Informed by Weston’s seafaring background, knowledge of Bermuda and the other locations in the book, and his ability to weave a compelling narrative, Cape Corse offers a great and plausible literary rendering of daily life at sea in the early nineteenth century.

Paul Weston

Paul Weston is the author of Weymouth Bound, Not by Sea and Cape Corse.  ​Experienced as a merchant seaman, as an engineer and of extensive yacht cruising, his plots and locations come from thinking himself into historical situations, imagining how he would fight the wars and how he would handle the ships. 

Paul spent eleven years as a merchant seaman, on tankers, offshore, and on ferries.  After graduating with a mechanical engineering degree, Paul worked for the Bermuda Electric Light Company and Lloyd’s Register Technical Investigation Department.  He started Weston Antennas Ltd, designing, manufacturing and installing large satellite earth station antennas worldwide and more recently works as a mechanical engineer with Siemens in Poole.  A prolific inventor, he has several patents to his name.

Paul has been sailing since childhood, initially on his family’s converted fishing boat True Vine.  In his teens, he sailed across the Atlantic in Cicely 2, a home designed and built 26 footer, and in his twenties to the Azores and back in another 26 footer, Pegasus.  In 2021, he and his wife Sally completed an intermittent four year voyage to the Mediterranean and back by sea, river and canal in Mitch, a 31 foot Mitchell Sea Angler.  Feeling that they had pushed the boundaries of what could be done in a small workboat, they sold Mitch after twenty two years of ownership. 

Their new boat, Kadash, is a 42 foot aluminium lift keel sailing yacht equipped, unlike Mitch, with a sleeping cabin.  In 2022 they took Kadash on a shakedown cruise from Port Napoleon at the mouth of the Rhone to Corsica and Elba and back, and in 2023 they cruised westwards from Port Napoleon.  Kadash is presently in Almerimar, Southern Spain, ready for more extensive cruising. 

Find more from Paul Weston now:

Kindle: https://amzn.to/3PhwrJD

Paperback: https://amzn.to/43dJt0x

Other outlets such as Apple books and Nook  https://books2read.com/u/3yQGLn

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