In 1905, after being served rancid meat, more than 600 Russian Navy sailors mutinied against their officers aboard the most powerful battleship in the world. Theirs was a life of hard labor and bitter oppression, similar in its hopelessness and injustice to most of the working class in Russia at the time. Certainly their rebellion came as no surprise. Still, against any reasonable odds of success, the sailors-turned-revolutionaries risked their lives to take control of the ship and raise the red flag of revolution. What followed was a violent port-to-port chase that spanned eleven harrowing days and came to symbolize the Russian Revolution itself. Bascomb's narrative alternates between the opulent court of Nicholas II and the razor's-edge tension aboard the Potemkin, a tale threaded with epic naval battles, heroic sacrifices, treachery, bloodlust, and a rallying cry to freedom that would steer the course of the twentieth century.--From publisher description.