The British Empire has sleepwalked, unprepared into war with the Triple Alliance, the Spanish colonies of the Caribbean and Central America.

But this is not to be a war like those which have gone before it; wars decided by crushing British sea power and eventually, on land by the superiority of the logistics and tactics of relatively small colonial armies in the South Western badlands.

No, this time it is the enemy, the Triple Alliance of Nuevo Granada, Cuba and Santo Domingo, allied to a miscellany of old Spanish crown colonies ringing the Caribbean and the Gulf of Spain, which seizes the initiative and in the opening days of the war deliver a series of hammer blows.

It began with a sneak invasion of Jamaica, the key strategic British base in the Caribbean, and the ambush of the light cruiser Achilles in the Windward Passage.

Remember Brave Achilles becomes the call to arms.

Yet this is not a war to be fought just in the West Indies or down in the contested borderlands.

In Spain - wracked by civil war Melody Danson, Henrietta De L’Isle, and the Manhattan Globe man Albert Stanton are on the run from the Inquisition.

On Little Inagua Island in the West Indies, Surgeon Lieutenant Abe Lincoln and his navigator, Ted Forest of the Royal Naval Air Service, both wounded, must fight for survival.

At sea the Atlantic Fleet, on paper invincible, must suddenly come to terms with that most vile of weapons - banned by treaty with the German Empire a decade ago - submarines.

And while disaster beckons, still New England slumbers, and everybody knows that when it awakens, rudely as it must, that there will be all hell to pay!

The New England Series continues next year with book five, George Washington’s Ghost, and book six, The Imperial Crisis.