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A United States Midshipman in the South Seas

Chapter 2: Introduction
By Yates Stirling
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About This Book

Two young midshipmen and their boatswain’s mate are stationed in a South Sea archipelago where competing native chiefs, foreign consuls, and commercial interests create tensions that escalate from local plotting and smuggling to armed conflict. The narrative follows their diplomacy, intelligence-gathering, and small-scale naval actions as they confront conspiracies, lead expeditions, and respond to raids. Interwoven with vivid descriptions of island ceremonies and everyday life, the episodes build toward a climactic campaign that resolves rival claims and restores a measure of order.

Introduction

In this story Midshipmen Phil Perry and Sydney Monroe, together with Boatswain’s Mate “Jack” O’Neil, act through an historic drama of a South Sea war.

The same characters have seen active service in many parts of the world.

In “A United States Midshipman Afloat,” life in a battle-ship of the Atlantic fleet, together with a typical South American revolution, furnished the setting. In “A United States Midshipman in China,” the midshipmen and O’Neil help to rescue an American Mission and put an end to a “Boxer” uprising. In “A United States Midshipman in the Philippines,” the same officers see very active service on board a gun-boat in coöperation with the army against the Filipino insurgents.

In “A United States Midshipman in Japan,” they discover a plot to bring the United States and Japan into open hostilities over the purchase of some foreign war-ships. War is narrowly averted through the detective work of the midshipmen and their Japanese classmate at Annapolis, but now a lieutenant in the Imperial Navy.

The present volume carries the midshipmen through further thrilling scenes that occurred in an island of the far-away South Seas. The portrayal of native life is faithful and many of the incidents are historic.