After a career at sea that caused his health to deteriorate, William Clark Russell retired and turned his attention to writing. Though he published several novels before The Wreck of the Grosvenor, this action-packed account of growing tensions among a ship's crew that eventually erupt into full-blown mutiny was his first major success.

Third in the series of Aubrey–Maturin adventures, this book is set among the strange sights and smells of the Indian subcontinent and in the distant waters ploughed by the ships of the East India Company. Aubrey is on the defensive, pitting wits and seamanship against an enemy enjoying overwhelming local superiority. But somewhere in the Indian Ocean lies the prize that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams: the ships sent by Napoleon