On the morning his brother is to be told whom he must marry, Ned Ashcombe shoots the bailiff’s hat off a fence. By dinner he has learnt that the bride is Lucy Wray, the girl he had hoped to marry himself. Her dowry will help keep the Ashcombe estate afloat. As the second son of a father who has already sold some of his best beeches, Ned must find his own means of making a living. In the spring of 1756, his uncle offers him a way out. The Admiralty’s Marine Forces will grant a commission without purchase, and Britain is going to war with France.

Portsmouth teaches Ned what the commission leaves out. He must learn to command men who have been at sea longer than he has been out of the schoolroom, and to keep his footing on a deck where rank gives him no advantage. In the Channel, a boat in the surf and a sail in the fog offer his first chances to prove himself. Prize money might one day buy him a place of his own, provided he lives to collect it.

In a Portsmouth shop that sells swords and pistols, Ned meets Ruth Venn. She knows what a good lock is worth, which customers can be trusted to pay, and how much work it takes to keep her father’s business sound. As Ned sails farther from home, their letters carry the small particulars of two very different lives. When her father’s health begins to fail and a cousin takes an interest in the shop’s affairs, Ruth has decisions of her own to make about the future.

Across the Atlantic, Ned finds a war fought as often from open boats as from the decks of ships. At Louisbourg, with a French warship burning in the harbour, men must row into danger and trust that there will still be a way out. On the St Lawrence, below the heights of Québec, a landing in the dark depends on finding a path that is scarcely visible from the water. Each new command puts more lives in Ned’s hands, and the men who follow him will remember what he does with them.
From the Hampshire estate to the French batteries of North America, The Second Son’s Commission follows a young Marine who goes to sea because he sees little future at home, and comes to wonder what sort of life he might build there.
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