Cutler Family Chronicles

This is the first blog profiling the naval, commercial, social and political history of the United States during the Age of Sail, as depicted in the Cutler Family Chronicles. Novels in the series are published by the Naval Institute Press located in Annapolis, Maryland.

The Cutler Family Chronicles is a projected seven-book series profiling the best of American duty, honor and courage during the Age of Fighting Sail. Years covered in the series are 1774 to 1815, from the American Revolution to the Second Barbary War. All seven novels have as a backdrop the creation of the U.S. Navy and the emergence of the United States as a commercial power on the world stage. All novels feature the seafaring Cutler family of Hingham, Massachusetts, as well as a supporting and ever expanding cast of characters.

While these novels feature plenty of swashbuckling sea action, they also reveal close interpersonal relationships among family members and friends. At their core they chronicle a life-long love story between Richard Cutler, the main protagonist, and the love of his life, English-born Katherine Hardcastle Cutler. Together, Richard and Katherine interact in intriguing ways with other men of honor and women of passion, some fictional, many of them real historical characters such as John Paul Jones, Thomas Jefferson, Horatio Nelson, John Adams, Stephen Decatur, Edward Preble, Isaac Hull, Oliver Hazard Perry, and the Marquis de Lafayette. Each historical character has been studiously researched and each novel has been vetted for historical accuracy.

Come sail in the breeze with Ranger, Bonhomme Richard, Falcon, USS Constellation and USS Constitution as the fledgling United States confronts, in the Revolution, the world’s greatest sea power, and then, in the Quasi-War with France, the world’s greatest land power. Along the way, and in the years following, America’s first naval heroes take on the Barbary States, twice, and England a second time, along with vipers’ nests in pirate-infested waters from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean, and to the Indian Ocean and beyond.