Youthful Folly — Charles Morgan

Youthful Folly is the third book in the Morning Bliss trilogy. The young battleship Morning Bliss has reached his adolescence and sails the Great Ocean while still growing and developing his mind and his huge power systems. But is he ready to fight anybody yet and what is he going to do when he grows up? The two intrepid and enormously successful chief executives officers, Skiff and Anthem have very different views as to how the ship should develop, Skiff wanting him to grow sixteen inch cannon and go on wild adventures while Anthem sees him becoming a merchant bank. But their differences all pale into irrelevance when they hear of the imminent arrival in the north of the hordes of Penelope Ffoulks Pemberton who have already ravaged the corporations of the southern ocean. How will they prepare their beloved ship to fight this awful threat and how can they possibly fight off this vast and violently destructive horde?