Beyond the call of duty

David Crane’s latest book is much more interesting than its title would lead you to believe. If you buy it hoping for a collection of stories of derring-do and British pluck, you won’t be wholly disappointed: you will indeed learn how Frank Abney Hastings, having got himself sacked from the Royal Navy for behaving like a petulant teenager when given his first command, went on almost single-handed to invent naval steam-powered gunboats, and used the first one he built to sink a ridiculous number of Turkish ships in the Greek War of Independence. You will read of Robert Peel’s son, William, winning his VC tossing live shells out of his battery at Sevastopol, riding out of the smoke and chaos to the rescue of the Grenadier Guards at Inkerman, immaculately dressed and accompanied by a midshipman on a pony, or dragging his naval 68-pounders up to the very walls of rebel forts in the Indian Mutiny.