Sentinels

In England, John Spencer's parents are dead, and his uncle sends him off to the Royal Navy as a “Gentleman Volunteer” on a ship, the HMS Sentinel, on anti-slavery patrol.

At the same time, in West Africa, a young farmer, Lyapo, is captured and sold into slavery.

The dual stories of Lyapo and John Spencer and how the two men's stories become intertwined is The Sentinels. The book is at once both an old-fashioned story of adventure aboard a ship as well as a story of the way beliefs and actions change through contact with other cultures.

This is a book I'd never have read when I was a child, but it's a story I'm glad I got to read as an adult. It holds up fairly well, though it is over forty years old.