Advice on Titles?

Since it’s the bicentennial of the War of 1812, I’m going to see if I can get a little bounce off the anniversary and release my old sea stories as ebooks. Beginning with those set in the War of 1812, of course.

(For those of you who don’t know, I had a career writing historical novels before I found a new berth as a science fiction writer.)

First up will be The Raider.  Except that The Raider wasn’t my original title, it was the title that Dell foisted on the book following its own strange algorithm for success.  If you were writing historical fiction for Dell in those days, you had to have two-word titles.  The first word had to be “the” and the second word had to be a noun, or at worst an adjective.   This was because John Jakes’ Kent Family Chronicles had two-word titles, and of course Jakes’ immense success obviously derived from his two-word titles.  If The Bastard had gone into the world with a title like The English Bastard,  then of course the whole series would have tanked, right?

My title for my book was Brig of War, which has the advantage of conveying the book’s nautical and martial background.

Now that I’m in the publishing business myself I can restore the original title, if I like.  But I thought I’d ask my readers first: What title do you prefer?  Or do you prefer yet another title?

Let me know.