Here is a true story based on the amazing adventures of Captain Luke Ryan - Irish swashbuckler American patriot mariner extraordinaire and Benjamin Franklin's most dangerous privateer... It is an epic story about war heroism love intrigue and betrayal spanning a period from the American Revolution to the French Revolution and through the rise of Napoleon. The year is 1778 and as the brutal war between the American Colonies and Great Britain drags on a 25 year old Irishman named Luke Ryan is the master of the fastest ship on the water the Black Prince and runs a very profitable smuggling trade between Dunkirk and Dublin. He and his men are indifferent to the war until one day the British seize his ship and throw his men into Dublin's Black Dog. Ryan is ruined but concocts a bold plan to break his men out of jail and to retake his ship and when his plan succeeds the Irishmen now fugitives and with prices on their heads set sail for France to offer their services to an American named Benjamin Franklin... The story is told in three books: Gather the Shadowmen (The Lords of the Ocean) Prince of the Atlantic and Napoleon's Gold (which can be read in or out of sequence).
