Bill Hammond

Plot Summary

Although A Matter of Honor is a novel set in the American Revolution, most of the action takes place on the high seas, in England and France, and in the West Indies.

The novel opens in Hingham, Massachusetts where the protagonist, aged 17, lives with his family. Richard Cutler has a love for the sea and for his older brother Will, who was forcibly taken by the Royal Navy off Marblehead and flogged to death for striking a king's officer. As a result, the Cutler family switches allegiance from England to the fledgling republic. Richard’s uncle lives in Fareham, England and manages with Richard’s father a shipping business that has thrived in the lucrative West Indies sugar trade. The family also owns a plantation on Barbados.

Will’s death motivates Richard to sign on as midshipman aboard Ranger, commanded by John Paul Jones. In Chapter 2, more is learned about the relationship between Richard and Will, in a flashback to 1774 when the brothers sail on a Cutler brig to Portsmouth, England, there to stay with their Uncle William and his family before sailing on to Barbados. In Fareham, Richard meets his cousins, Lizzy and Robin, and also Katherine Hardcastle, a beautiful young aristocrat whose brother Jamie becomes Richard’s close friend and whose father is a retired post captain in the Royal Navy.

Chapter 3 finds Ranger sailing across the Atlantic to France on a mission to apprise Benjamin Franklin of the astounding defeat of the British at Saratoga. Franklin at this time is in sensitive negotiations with the French government regarding a possible alliance. Ranger arrives safely after a close call with a British frigate, and Jones takes Cutler to Paris with him as his aide-de-camp. Once there, Cutler has a front row seat in Franklin’s negotiations and the life of la haute culture. He also meets a beguiling young woman, Anne-Marie Helvétian, with whom he has a brief but torrid affair.

Back at sea, Ranger sees action against HMS Drake, a Royal Navy frigate. Victorious, Jones sends the captured Drake back to France as a prize. Jones now reviews with his officers his plan for raiding Whitehaven, an English seaport that shelters a vast fleet of coastal traders. The objective is to neutralize the fort guarding the harbor and to set fire to the vessels, thus striking terror in the British psyche.

The attack takes place in April of 1778. American sailors and marines land on the beach, take the fort, and set fire to the fishing fleet. Much of the fort’s garrison has been out on night exercises and returns just as the Americans are running from the fort. A bloody fight ensues. Jones makes it back to Ranger, but others do not, including Cutler, who is knocked senseless by a British grenadier as he battles to save the life of a fellow midshipman, Agreen Crabtree.

Part II of the novel opens in Old Mill Prison in Plymouth, England, where Cutler and several others, including Crabtree, are taken following the raid. During a meeting one evening in the prison barracks, Cutler offers an ingenious plan of escape. His plan does not come to fruition for him, however. His Uncle William has connections in Parliament and has arranged for his nephew to be released into his custody.

Chapter 8 and 9 are set in Fareham where Cutler learns, to his great distress, that Katherine Hardcastle has become engaged to Horatio Nelson, whom Richard met in Barbados in 1774. He also learns that his cousin Lizzy has become engaged to Jamie Hardcastle, who is now involved with convoy duty as a midshipman aboard HMS Serapis -- but who is expecting imminent promotion to a larger ship. Richard is resolved to escape from England and hatches a plan with a local viscount who, like many Britons, is sympathetic to the American cause. In the meantime, Cutler receives a visit from Crabtree, who has been released from Old Mill in a prisoner exchange and who has come to Fareham to take Cutler with him to France aboard a Dutch trader – in the same evening that Cutler learns from Lizzy that Katherine has decided, in her love for Richard, not to marry Nelson.

Back in France, Cutler and Crabtree are reunited aboard Bonhomme Richard with Captain Jones, who appoints them third and fourth lieutenants. Jones leads a squadron of warships into British waters to force the Royal Navy to give chase and thus draw its warships away from the Channel where they are on station to defend England against a combined French and Spanish invasion. The squadron sails into the North Sea where it discovers a large merchant fleet returning from the Baltic countries. The convoy is protected by two warships, one, a frigate, HMS Serapis.

The two British warships advance on the small American squadron as the convoy flees to safety. Night falls as the battle begins. After battering each other at close range, Bonhomme Richard and Serapis become tied together, the bow of Richard lashed to the stern of Serapis. The British fire shot through the hull of Richard, while French marines on the American ship rake the British weather deck with muskets, swivel guns and mortars. Bonhomme Richard is near total wreckage when Cutler, stationed on the main top, steps out on a yardarm, crosses over to Serapis, and drops a grenade on a pile of powder bags leading down to the gundeck. As he does so, Jamie Hardcastle unexpectedly appears from below, sees Cutler up on the yardarm, then throws himself against an English officer taking aim at Cutler with a pistol. The gun discharges, fatally wounding Hardcastle, who dies in Richard’s arms as Bonhomme Richard sinks astern.

In Chapter 12 Richard leaves Jones and travels to London in the company of the captain of the captured Serapis. He takes a coach to Portsmouth, meets his uncle in his shipping office, and discovers that his attempt to save Jamie’s life has received wide coverage in the British press and has fueled anti-war sentiment in Parliament. He and Katherine are reunited in Fareham: he proposes marriage and she accepts.

The first two chapters of Part III are set in the West Indies, Chapter 13 in Barbados and Chapter 14 in Tobago, where the Cutlers have acquired a second plantation managed by Robin Cutler and his bride Julia Fletcher, a relative of the powerful Mount Gay Rum family. For Cutler, there is a lull in the fighting as he learns the family business, though he remains obsessed with the accounts of war in America as reported in the Bridgetown Gazette. He and Katherine sail to Tobago when an outbreak of the deadly “black vomit” erupts on Barbados. While they are on the island, Scarborough, the colonial capital, is attacked by a French naval squadron under the command of Commodore de Bougainville. Through a series of events the British commander is persuaded to surrender the fort. The Cutler family now decides to leave Tobago to consolidate its holdings on Barbados. Cutler, however, has been requested by De Bougainville to serve as a lieutenant aboard his ship, soon to meet up with Admiral De Grasse, and sail on to Yorktown. Cutler agrees, at Katherine’s urging, even though she tells him she is pregnant. She realizes that his going to Virginia is, for him, a matter of honor.