A Handful of Salt — Tony Nash

At the beginning of the 19th century, Joshua Nash, the son of Thomas, the protagonist in the first novel of this series, 'A Handful of Dust', by an aborigine woman, opts for a life on the ocean wave, with the ambition of becoming the first aborigine master mariner. He earns his rite of passage, enduring gales, mutiny, disasters, hunger and being set adrift in a tiny coracle to die by a pirate captain, after his ship has been taken in the West Indies. Picked up by a Royal Navy ship of the line he fights a duel on his first day against a senior officer, who dies by his own weapon. Joshua serves as a Lieutenant on the ship, and while doing so sees his own vessel, which has been renamed by the pirates. Offered a permanent commission in the Navy he declines, determined to go back to the West Indies to recapture his ship, which he does, taking prisoner the Scorpion, the woman pirate captain. By a twist of fate they fall in love, and he helps her recover her father's lands in Spain, taken from her father by a relative. She is seriously wounded in the sttack, but recovers, and he takes her back to Australia to celebrate their marriage and his father's 65th birthday. At the party his mentor, Amos, tells him he is retiring and nominates Joshua the new Commander of the Fleet. He has achieved his life's ambition.