It wasn't the first time that His Majesty's armed schooner Gipsy had encountered a Caribbean hurricane. But for Lieutenant Michael Fitton, who commanded her, this particular hurricane was to bring quite unexpected dangers and problems: an uncharted coral island, a clash with his old enemy the French Gloire, and the surprising advent of Mrs Sarah Buckley. And it seemed to Fitton that these stirring events were put in train by a cockroach - or to be more precise, half a cockroach.

First published in 2000 Mr Fitton's Hurricane was the eleventh and last of Showell Styles' sequence of novels about Fitton, a real-life seafaring hero of the Napoleonic age. All eleven are now available in Faber Finds.

Frank Showell Styles was born in Four Oaks, Warwickshire, in 1908 and served in the Royal Navy in World War Two before embarking on his successful literary career, during which he published over 160 books. He died in 2005.