By Force of Arms

By Force of Arms is a 1997 novel by maritime author James L. Nelson. It is the story of Captain Isaac Biddlecomb and Ezra Rumstick and their anti-British occupations in the year 1775, directly before the American Revolution began. By Force of Arms is the first installment in the Revolution at Sea Saga.
Plot
Isaac Biddlecomb's ship, the Judea, which is carrying a hold full of smuggled molasses, is destroyed by a British frigate. He and his friend Ezra Rumstick are soon after arrested, but they escape and end up aboard the William B. Adams, a merchantman on which they agree to work. But it doesn't last, as they are tricked by the Adams's first mate, Stephen Fry, into being pressed aboard the British man-o-war the Icarus, where they meet Lieutenant James Pendexter, a young, rash, irrisponsible captain who has just been given the Icarus as his first command. Biddlecomb and Rumstick are shocked to see the abuse heaped upon the crew by McDuff, the boatswain, and Edward Longbottom, his boatswain's mate. Isaac Biddlecomb assures his friend that when they arrive in Barbados he will be able to get a note to a friend who lives there, but he is unsuccesful, and the failure of impressing the governer there pushes Captain Pendexter to the brink of insanity, which in turn drives the crew to mutiny, led by Biddlecomb and Rumstick. They take over the ship, and, after being pursued by the H.M.S. Cerberus and various other British men-o-war, they eventually make it back to America, where the Icarus, now in the hands of the revolutionaries, is beaten to a pulp by the British frigate the H.M.S. Rose. But Biddlecomb, Rumstick, and a small percentage of the crew survive, and they return to their country with hope for the future.
Characters
* Isaac Biddlecomb- Twenty-nine-year-old captain of the Judea. He supposedly rose from midshipman to captain in eleven years, a feat not performed by a large amount of sea-going men. He is described in The Maddest Idea (Book Two of the Revolution at Sea Saga) as "...not a man who stood out in a crowd; his height was an unremarkable five foot ten inches, not fat though certainly not thin, dark brown hair tied in a queue and hanging down just past his shoulders." His father was killed in the French and Indian War, his mother having died earlier of natural causes.
* Ezra Rumstick- A fierce, lion-hearted revolutionary. He and Isaac are best friends, and were arrested together in By Force of Arms. He was the one mostly responsible for the actual follow-through of the mutiny on the Icarus, as he beat up the boatswain and threw the boatswain's mate overboard when they finally destroyed his power to remain calm by brutalising a young sailor. He was then put in irons and sentenced to two thousand lashes with the cat o' nine tails, which Biddlecomb was meant to deliver half of, but refused.
* Lieutenant James Pendexter- The twenty-one-year-old, weak-willed and gullible captain of the H.M.S. Icarus. He is easily manipulated by his first mate Smeaton and his boatswain McDuff. He is the nephew of Samuel Graves, who is explained to have given Pendexter command of the Icarus, because of filial relation, and not because of any experience on Pendexter's part.
* Virginia Stanton- The daughter of William Stanton, the man who took Isaac Biddlecomb in after the death of his parents. After several years, she begins to realise that she has feelings for Isaac other than sisterly ones, just as he begins to suspect the same thing about himself.
* William Stanton- The father of Virginia Stanton, who commanded the vessel on which Isaac Biddlecomb's father travelled to meet the enemy in the French and Indian War, which he never returned from, after which, Stanton took Isaac in as his own son. He has no objection to Biddlecomb's and his Virginia's romantic feelings toward each other, he just seems a little surprised at it, claiming that he had never suspected it.
* "Bloody" Wilson- A sailor aboard the H.M.S. Icarus. He is the first one to behave in any manner of friendliness to Biddlecomb, and also the first one to think of mutiny as any kind of a good idea. he is killed in the final battle between the Icarus and the Rose.

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