Fleet

Three weeks to launch…

Captain James Kerr Hanley is given the order to launch Graplin, on its trials. He is under pressure to commission Graplin into the China Flotilla as per the schedule, despite the recent arrival of Lieutenant Commander Crowe.

They have three weeks and Hanley is determined for the launch to go without any glitches.

But life at home is no better for Hanley.

His wife Eunice, bored and alone with Hanley at sea, grabs the opportunity to escape her monotonous life when she receives an invite to one of her old friend Lady Olivia Brampton’s fashionable soirées in London.

There she meets Commander Herr Weichert, the handsome German naval attaché in London and before long, their relationship has developed into something much closer…

Little does Eunice know the implications of her affair. She is being watched and even her children are well aware of what is going on. How will she keep this charade going?

Meanwhile, Albert Gillings is the senior engineer working on Graplin. He knows there is a strong possibility the launch of Graplin could be delayed due to technical problems, not something he is going to let happen easily.

With the clock ticking, Gillings is faced with Graplin, and his own son…

Surrounded by the stench of poverty, Kitty Cullen, relishes the moment for the last time.

Finally, after a full sixteen years, Kitty and her family are leaving the house she grew up in. Now is the time for a change.

When the opportunity to work for Eddie comes knocking, Kitty grabs it. Soon, the chains of luxury surround her.

When the Graplin gets into trouble, everyone comes together, with lives lost and destinies changing.

The drama never stops Fleet , where duty, desire and ambition are bound together, all in service of the harshest mistress; the sea.

Praise for Raymond Hardie

‘No Man’s Land takes the reader on a remarkable journey through the interwar decades of the twentieth century’ - Professor Michael A. Bernstein, Tulane University

Raymond Hardie is a novelist and screenplay writer. Though brought up in Northern Ireland and educated at Queen’s University Belfast, the first four years of his life were spent in Gillingham. It was those first memories of warships along the river Medway and the mystique of the shipyard beyond the long wall that remained with him and finally became the basis for Fleet .