Sharpe's Trafalgar

Bernard Cornwell published Sharpe's Trafalgar in 2000. It is the fourth of the Sharpe novels, and the earliest in the series' internal chronology of the campaigns against Napoleon, putting an army ensign aboard a naval battle.

In 1805 Sharpe is sailing for England from India aboard the East Indiaman Calliope, meaning to join the 95th Rifles. He is swindled over the supplies he has bought for the voyage, and when he finds out he recovers not only his own money but that of another victim, a naval captain called Joel Chase, who would otherwise have been unable to pay a gambling debt the next morning.

Chase is grateful, and he is also under orders to destroy the Revenant, a French 74-gun ship that has been raiding in the Indian Ocean. The Calliope's passengers include Lady Grace, and the novel follows the voyage and the fighting it leads to, which places Sharpe in the middle of the action at Trafalgar, a battle he has no business being anywhere near, which is part of the joke and part of the point.