Command a King's Ship cover art

Command a King's Ship

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

Command a King's Ship

By: Alexander Kent
Narrated by: Michael Jayston
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £15.99

Buy Now for £15.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

 Spithead, 1784. His Majesty's frigate, Undine, sets sail for India and the seas beyond. Europe may be at peace - but in colonial waters the promises of statesmen count for little and the bloody struggle for supremacy still goes on. Richard Bolitho would have cause to remember his admiral's words: 'The task I am giving you would be better handled by a squadron'.

©1975 Alexander Kent (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction War & Military Royalty

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Midshipman Bolitho cover art
Kydd cover art
The First to Land cover art
The Iron Pirate cover art
Winged Escort cover art
The Greatest Enemy cover art
H.M.S. Saracen cover art
Surface with Daring cover art
Badge of Glory cover art
Wake of the Perdido Star cover art
The Volunteers cover art
Battlecruiser cover art
Killing Ground cover art
A Prayer for the Ship cover art
A Ship Must Die cover art
Strike from the Sea cover art

Critic reviews

“One of our foremost writers of naval fiction.” ( Sunday Times, London)
All stars
Most relevant  
Can’t stop listening to these books the narrator is perfect and the stories are just brilliant. And

Detailed and brilliant story telling

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have read the book before but it was my first audible book. Apart from my tendency to fall asleep just before the timer, I really enjoyed it.
I suppose it is largely down to the narrator if you enjoy the book and in this respect I was fortunate. The narrator was excellent! And that has given me the confidence, having listened to the standard set, to get several other titles not only from this series but across a range of books and authors. I am looking forward to my next audible book.

Great narration,

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I suppose this genre really began with Captain Marryat!’s Mr. Midshipman Easy. Hoe er, we ought really thank mr. Forster for the proliferation of writers, who in more contemporary times, have given us so many of these - some more credible than others. They depend largely on being able to follow the careers of their chosen characters through many adventures and promotions.
My only complaint relating to this particular audio book is the strange pronunciation of some words and the odd reversals in pronouncing ‘boy’.

Another good yarn from the era of fighting ships on the sale

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This one is as good as all the previous ones in the series,still find it hard to stop listening part way through

Another hit

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
always love these books and the performance is always amazing. I would recommend listening to this and the whole series.

loved the quirky story in the west indies

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I am going through these books with some alacrity, they are still as good as I remember from many years ago. This one felt like more of a slow burner and took a while before it really gripped me, I wasn't quite as enamoured with it as most of the others so far. However, by the end there are copious amounts of gun smoke, fallen rigging and intense fighting as Kent moves it towards a cracking finale. Not one of my favourites in the series but overall this is an excellent collection of sea-going adventures!

Not quite so fast-paced . . .

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
First such book from Audible and being an ex-sailor it won't be my last. loved the fact it put you in the environment rather than tried to explain all the nuances of the time period.

Great Stort

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
i can hear Tom Selllck reading this book to me and I am transported to Paradise

the rhythm of delivery

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
After a while the listener can become tired of a all the "he/she said quietly" and the pattern by Jayston of leaving a marked pause before actually reading aloud the speech that follows. It may be that if a writer wishes to explore his characters to a depth likely to catch the reader's imagination then other aspects need to be pruned away to avoid writing something approaching the length of War and Peace.
But formulaic writing always annoys me, as it smacks overmuch of laziness on the writer's part. It's not too hard to imagine the publisher calling the author and demanding his contract terms be met, and that another Bolitho tale be on the shelves by.... (name a date). And Kent wearily reaching for his word processor to begin his next edition in the Bolitho serial, trying to muster some enthusiasm for the coming weeks of mental trial. How many ways can wooden-ship naval action be described without falling back on tired cliches and patterns of battling? It's well enough known that Forester hated writing his Hornblower stories, but publisher pressure was what it took to get him to write another. Then another. And it's those little books that produced the pattern evident in Kent's novels where there's a Bolitho involved. But Forester did it better. So much better. But if readers like the atmosphere of sailing and naval battling between the late 18th and early 19th centuries, then there's only Forester, Kent and - wossisnamagain? In two out of three of these series, the super-Captain has a super-servant who attaches himself to his hero, only Bolitho does it serially - finding two of these infinitely faithful treasures, the second taking up right away from the more slavish first. Which was a developmental error. Stockdale gets it, Allday springs into the breach so created and essentially becomes Stockdale, but with added tendency to be a little more "forward" with his captain,
The final Forester-Hornblower never made it to being audio'd yet these inferior works seemingly exist by the multiple-dozen by comparison in audio format. Why? Maybe a change of publisher with a differing take on audio-transfer?
Initially, I bought all of the Hornblowers in book form. Then re bought them on Kindle. Then yet again in audio format. While obviously imperfect, they're that good.

There's no way in the world that I'd have done so had the forester books been written in the style used by Kent.
But since I like stories of naval action before ships were made of steel and belched stinking smoke while under weigh, I've had to face up to the reality that Hornblower stuff can only be read and reread so many times. Leaving the alternatives of Kent and - the other chap whose name still eludes me. He that wrote (perpetrated?) those Aubrey excrescences... I've read several of those and can take no more.

Kent finishes these books too abruptly. This one passes from gung-ho fighting through to a very brief "epilogue" to - the end. Can't he write better - and much less abrupt? endings than that?
It seems - not.

Formulaic

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
For all Patrick O'Brien fans who have run out of books this is decidedly one step down and should be listed as an adventure yarn. Not much seamanship here its up and down with the top gallants loke a whore's draws on a Saturday night in Portsmouth.
If you like your swashbuckling gory red and Navy blue you might well take to this.

Boys Own Adventure

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.