It is August 1863 and the Confederate Navy Cruiser Palmetto escapes from Charleston harbour to resume her career as a raider, hunting the shipping of the United States. The succeeding months see her range the Atlantic Ocean before facing a wild passage of Cape Horn, as her Captain Thomas Grover steers his ship for the Orient, seeking ever more victims in his mission to cripple the overseas commerce of the enemy.

Martin Hicks lives in Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire Scotland and began writing after a career in education. "An Instrument of War," the sequel to "Palmetto," is his tenth book, all of them set in the war of 1861-65. He is currently working on the third and final book of the "Palmetto" series.