Release date: 1st November 2026, Pre-order now Here(Amazon)
Seventeen-year-old Will Topping is the spare hand — the outsider on a fishing trawler turned warship. He came to sea to prove himself. To belong. To be more than the boy they see.
But the North Sea is unforgiving, and the crew of the Rosie Morn have no time for weakness. Every rope burns, every order matters, and every mistake is remembered.
Beneath the waves, a silent threat waits.
When the danger finally comes, Will will face a choice no fifteen-year-old should have to make — and in that moment, he will learn what it truly means to stand with others.
Inspired by the real minesweeping trawlers of the First World War, this is a powerful story of courage, loyalty, and the cost of earning your place.
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During WWI, a munitions factory charge hand must push her team of women to meet dangerous quotas to save her family from ruin, unaware that their desperate race for a bonus is leading them all toward a catastrophic, fatal explosion.
Will Topping joins the crew of the Rosie Morn to prove he belongs But life at sea is harder than he imagined, and the crew are slow to trust him. A tense, psychologically driven coming-of-age story at sea, where the real danger isn’t the war — it’s the need to prove you belong.
Desperate to prove his worth in 1914 Scarborough, fifteen-year-old Georgie uncovers a spy ring signaling the enemy fleet. When adults dismiss his warnings as a game, he must race alone to stop a catastrophic bombardment before his home is destroyed.
Underage and unflinching, Scarborough girl Eliza nurses the wounded of the Somme, then follows the war to Étaples, the vast base camp where men aren’t broken so much as processed. When mutiny erupts and she is ordered to certify a condemned man fit to be shot, she must decide how much more she is willing to give.
Seventeen-year-old Will Topping wants to prove he belongs among the men aboard HMT Rosie Morn, a Scarborough fishing trawler pressed into wartime service as a minesweeper.
His father helped him get the berth, and everyone knows it. Will is inexperienced, too eager, and painfully aware that every mistake confirms what the crew already thinks: he has not earned his place.
Under the hard instruction of veteran fisherman John Barber, Will slowly learns the work. He begins to understand the sea, the sweep wire and the discipline required to keep the men around him safe. Acceptance comes gradually, not through one dramatic moment, but through doing the job properly, again and again.
Against the backdrop of the German bombardment of Scarborough and the growing danger of mines in the North Sea, Rosie Morn is pushed further south on increasingly hazardous patrols. As Will becomes more capable, the crew finally begin to treat him as one of their own.
Then Rosie Morn strikes a mine.
As the vessel goes down, Barber remains behind trying to free the trapped sweep cable. Will escapes with the others, but when he sees Barber still aboard, the moment he has spent the entire story searching for suddenly seems to be in front of him.
Will goes back.
Neither man returns.
The Fate of Rosie Morn is a story of apprenticeship, belonging, fatherhood and the quiet courage of ordinary men sent to do extraordinary work during the First World War. It is inspired by the real William Topping and John Barber, two Scarborough men lost aboard the trawler-minesweeper Rosy Morn.
