Quarterdeck · first book, and I knew that was it, so I moved the house in my mind to Falmouth.”...

Quarterdeck

Compliments of McBooks Press

SUMMER 2020

MARITIME LITERATURE & ART REVIEW

www.mcbooks.com / www.rowman.com

THE DESTINATION FOR NAUTICAL FICTION

ContentsSUMMER 2020

3 | QUARTERDECK | SUMMER 2020

INTERVIEW

8 J. D. DAVIES Britannia’s Victorian Royal Navy comes alive in the Dawlish Chronicles

FEATURE

18 THE ROYAL GEORGERoy and Lesley Adkins chronicle

the sinking of the Royal Navy’s greatest warship.

DEPARTMENTS

4 SCUTTLEBUTT

23 BOOK REVIEWS

26 MARITIME FICTION

30 MARITIME HISTORY

31 MARINE ARTTony Fernandes

Quarterdeck is published quarterly byTall Ships Communications

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269-372-4673

EDITOR & PUBLISHERGeorge D. Jepson

[email protected]

ASSOCIATE EDITORAmelia A. Yeoman

Quarterdeck is distributedby McBooks Press, an imprint of

Globe Pequot246 Goose Lane, Suite 200

Guilford, CT 06437

EDITORIAL DIRECTORGeorge D. Jepson

Phone: [email protected]

www.mcbooks.com

Visit Quarterdeck and McBooks Presson Facebook

ON THE COVER:

Detail from “In a Portsmouth Fog” depicting the 74-Gunship Hercules in 1759, an oil-on-canvas

painting by American marine artistPaul Garnett.© Paul Garnett

© Tall Ships Communications

COLUMNS

5 By GeorgeRichard Bolitho’s Clerk

14 AUTHOR’S NOTES Kydd’s Devon and Cornwall by Kathy Stockwin

QuarterdeckMARITIME LITERATURE & ART

REVIEW

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NEW BOOKRELEASES

2020

US (United States)UK (United Kingdom)

TPB (Trade Paperback)PB (Paperback)HB (Hardback)

EB (Ebook)NF (Nonfiction)

JULY

The Hooligans (USHB)by P. T. Deutermann

AUGUST

A Furious Sky (USHB)Eric Jay Dolin

SEPTEMBER

Devil of a Fix (USTPB)by Marcus Palliser

To the Eastern Seas (UKTPB)by Julian Stockwin

OCTOBER

Balkan Glory (UKHB)by Julian Stockwin

A King’s Cutter (USTPB)by Richard Woodman

A Brig of War (USTPB)by Richard Woodman

Word of Honor (USHB)by Robert N. Macomber

NOVEMBER

By Force of Arms (USTPB)by James L. Nelson

The Maddest Idea (USTPB)by James L. Nelson


D avid Donachie has launched the four shortstories featuring Midshipman Charles DeVere Wormwood in His Majesty’s Royal

Navy, scion of a rich, noble, and corrupt father, asailor by parental coercion rather than inclination,who could sink Nelson’s Navy on his own. “The Wormwood stories were written for amuse-ment and to be humorous, based on the certainty notall naval officers could have been brave and upright,some being completely unsuited to the role,” says

Donachie. “Charles Wormwood is such a per-son.”All four stories – All at Sea, The Hero’s Curse, AFleet to Command, and The Corsican Sisters are

available in individual ebook editions.The entire collection is also available in a

trade paperback edition entitledMidshipman Wormwood Goes toWar (see page 27).

SCUTTLEBUTT

JULIAN STOCKWIN

J ulian Stockwin’s new Thomas Kydd naval adven-ture, Balkan Glory, will be launched in the Unit-ed Kingdom in October and in

the United States in November. In 1811, the Adriatic, the “French Lake,” is nowthe most valuable territory Napoleon Bonaparte pos-sesses. Captain Sir Thomas Kydd finds his gloriousreturn to England cut short when the Admiralty sum-

mons him to lead a squad-ron of frigates into thesewaters to cause havoc anddistress to the enemy. Kydd is dubbed “The Sea Devil” by Bonaparte whopersonally appoints one of his favorites, Dubourdieu,along with a fleet that greatly outweighs the British, to ridhim of this menace. At the same time, Nicholas Renzi is sent to Austria ona secret mission to sound out the devious arch-statesman,Count Metternich. His meetings reveal a deadly plan byBonaparte that threatens the whole balance of power in

Europe. The only thing that can stop it is a decisive action at sea. He must some-how send a message to Kydd telling him to engage the French Adriatic fleet and“Destroy Dubourdieu.” Kydd faces his enemy with impossible odds stacked against him. Can he shatterBonaparte's dreams of breaking out of Europe and marching to the gates of Indiaand Asia?

David Donachie

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RICHARD BOLITHO’SClerkI n 1966, English novelist

Douglas Reeman took up ayear-long residence in Portloe,a small fishing village and an-

cient smugglers’ lair on the RoselandPeninsula along Cornwall’s ruggedChannel coast. Over several months, he steepedhimself in the Cornish culture, lan-guage, and history, preparing to writea new naval adventure introducingCaptain Richard Bolitho of His Maj-esty’s Royal Navy during the Age ofFighting Sail.

To Glory We Steer was publishedin 1968 under Reeman’s pen name,Alexander Kent, to acclaim on bothsides of the Atlantic, and was “thebeginning of a beautiful friendship,”to quote Humphrey Bogart’s finalline to Claude Rains in the film Casablanca. “It is a splendid yarn, and the hero is a wor-thy successor to Hornblower,” said The DailyTelegraph in London. The New York TimesBook Review opined, “Had George III a fewmore like Capt. Richard Bolitho, commanderof the frigate Phalarope, the American Revolu-tion might have worked out as well as the Bayof Pigs.” Over the next half-century and beyond,new releases in the Bolitho canon were pe-rennial top-ten best-sellers aroundthe world, often reaching numberone. Not infrequently, Reemanhad two titles competing on thesame lists, one by Alexander Kentand another under his name. During his career, Reeman authored 37 nov-els as himself and another 28 as Alexander

By George!

Kent. His books were published in19 countries and sold more than33 million copies. Once, he told me that he con-sidered himself to be Richard Bo-litho’s secretary – or clerk –reporting what happened in hischaracter’s life.

To Glory We Steer, and RichardBolitho came along at a time oftransition in naval fiction. C. S.Forester’s death in March 1966left a significant gap in the genre.The Hornblower novels stood vir-tually alone in the genre, begin-ning in 1937 with the publicationof The Happy Return. By the mid-1960’s, Reeman

was an established novelist with hisSecond World War naval adven-

tures, harboring a desire to write about theRoyal Navy under sail. “I’d thought about it for years, not as a seriesbut as a single book,” he told me in 2008, theyear in which he celebrated half a century as apublished author. “It was very difficult in thosedays because everybody thought of it as C. S.Forester’s territory. It had appealed to me sinceI was eleven years old and was taken on boardHMS Victory by my grandfather. “I was encouraged by my American pub-

lisher Walter Minton to start the series,because he said, ‘You’re always talking

about Nelson and that period.Why don’t you write about it?’and then he said, ‘What are wegoing to call this guy?’ I said,

‘Richard Bolitho,’ immediately because thatwas the name of the army captain I’d met �

Douglas Reeman on the cliffs above Portloe

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some years before in Gorey, Jer-sey, when I was looking for aberth for my boat. He was thebrother of the then Lord Lieu-tenant of Cornwall, and he didlive to know he’d given hisname to our hero. I think hewas quite chuffed about it.” Once settled in Portloe, Ree-

man set about developingthe background in RichardBolitho’s life. “I knew hewould be a Cornishman,”he revealed during an in-terview for Quarterdeck in2005. “I’ve always loved Cornwall and feltclose to it, used to go there when I wasa child, liked the mystique of the place,the beauty, the language, and the factthat so many great seamen came fromCornwall. It was inevitable. “It seemed Falmouth was the place[for Bolitho’s home], situated on theRiver Fal. I fell in love with it. Most ofthe names of Richard Bolitho’s firstship’s company come from grave-

stones between Falmouth, Fowey, and StMawes. “The big grey house is not in Falmouth, ofcourse, as a lot of people have discoveredwho’ve gone looking for it. It’s inland, in asmall village. I saw it when I was planning thefirst book, and I knew that was it, so I movedthe house in my mind to Falmouth.” Reeman loosely based Richard Bolitho onAdmiral Augustus Keppel (1725 – 1786), aRoyal Navy officer and politician, according �

ABOVE Portloe, the smallfishing village that onceharbored smuggling opera-tions along Cornwall’ssouth coast on the EnglishChannel. RIGHT The “biggrey house” on which theBolitho family home wasbased, and in the novelssits just below PendennisCastle at Falmouth, over-looking Carrick Roads.

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to Kim, who was her husband’s literary partnerfor over 30 years. “Douglas admired his integri-ty, courage, empathy, and officer-like quali-ties,” she explained. “He said Keppel ‘was madeof steel, with the quiet qualities of a hero.’”Those same traits describe Richard Bolitho. The Cornwall thread carries through thenovels and in the lives of the Reemans. Fal-mouth and “the big grey house” appear for thefirst time in the second chapter of To Glory WeSteer. The frigate Phalarope anchors off thetown, landing a press-gang charged with fillingout the ship’s company, while Bolitho returnsto his family home with Lieutenant ThomasHerrick. In 1985, two decades after his Portloe stay,Douglas and Kim holidayed in Cornwall. “Weexplored the Cornish countryside, and heshowed me the ‘real’ Bolitho house,” she re-called. On one occasion, they were strollingthrough Mousehole, a village and fishing portnear Penzance on the English Channel whenthey happened upon a small art gallery with awatercolor displayed in the window. “We were walking past on the steep street,and Douglas saw it, and we stopped, and hegazed at it through the window,” Kim said.“Then we went inside, and he had a long, long,


ABOVE LEFT AugustusKeppel as a young offi-cer in 1749, portrayedby English artist JoshuaReynolds. The paintingwas completed on theisland of Minorca. Kep-pel’s pose closely re-sembles English artistVal Biro’s conceptdrawing of Richard Bo-litho. Keppel served hiscountry for 51 years asan officer in the RoyalNavy and in the Houseof Commons from 1755to 1782. ABOVE RIGHTThe watercolor by Eng-lish marine artist Geof-frey Huband thateventually led to himcreating cover paintingsfor the entire RichardBolitho series, as well asthe Reeman novels.

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meditative look at it. “I said, knowing his critical eye: ‘Is it good?’Meaning, ‘technically accurate,’ and he said qui-etly, ‘Yes. It’s good. It’s very, very good.’ Heliked the quality of the light, and the two vessels‘speaking’ at dawn, and I knew he was verydrawn to it. “I said, ‘Would you like it?’ And hesaid, ‘Yes, Iwould.’ So Ibought it forhim.” The marineartist was Geof-frey Huband,and soon after,he began a longassociation withthe Bolitho andReeman novels,creating coverart. It’s threeyears sinceDouglas Reeman“Crossed the Bar.” His naval adventures remainin print, still as fresh as the day they were ini-tially published – a lasting legacy to the manKim lovingly calls “The Admiral.” n – George Jepson


Destiny’s Tide, the first title in the trilo-gy, introduces young shipmaster Jack Stan-nard during a perilous period in England.Fear, doubt, and distrust result from reli-gious changes executed by the old mon-arch, while Jack battles enemies at sea anddeals with personal demons. In Battle’s Flood, the Stannard storymoves forward two decades. Intrigue inQueen Elizabeth I’s court entangles Jackand his son Tom in an infamous slave voy-age to the West African coast and the Ca-ribbean with John Hawkins and Francis �

W elsh novelist and mari-time historian J. D. Da-vies sets sail in the Tudorera with his Navy Royal

trilogy, featuring the seafaring Stannardfamily from Dunwich on England’s SuffolkCoast. The Stannard saga stretches from KingHenry VIII’s wars with Scotland andFrance in the mid-1540’s – including ac-tion aboard the Mary Rose – to the clash in1588 between the English fleet and theSpanish Armada.

INTERVIEW

The Navy Royal Trilogy stretches fromHenry VIII’s Mary Rose to the Spanish Armada

J. D. Davies

Detail from a painting byRichard Schlecht portraying

the sinking in 1545 of thecarrack-type warship Mary

Rose in the English Tudornavy of King Henry VIII.

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INTERVIEW

Drake.Armada’s Wake (see page 13) com-

pletes the trilogy as the Spanish fleetapproaches England. Tom Stannardcommands a warship, while his sonJack serves aboard Drake’s Revenge. Davies, an eminent authority onseventeenth-century British naval his-tory, authored Pepys’s Navy: Ships, Menand Warfare, 1649 – 1689, which wonthe Samuel Pepys Award in 2009. Hismost recent history, Kings of the Sea:Charles II, James II and the Royal Navy,won the Anderson Prize in 2017.

Gentleman Captain launched Da-vies’s fictional Journals of MatthewQuinton in 2009. Quinton’s naval ca-reer begins in 1662 at the behest ofKing Charles II, who seeks loyal offi-cers by offering commands to youngcavaliers. The canon currently numbersseven titles, a series prequel, and a pre-quel novella.

nautical fiction has been set at thattime. I was very comfortable with theperiod, having studied and taught it formany years, and quickly realized how Icould take a very different approach toit, following one seafaring familythrough three generations who livethrough switchback religious changesand are present at some of the mostfamous naval events of the time, suchas the sinking of the Mary Rose and thebattles against the Spanish Armada.Jack represents the first of those gener-ations, so we also get to meet his chil-dren and grandchildren. The familydynamic set against the backdrop ofturbulent times is a key element of thestorylines.

Tell us about your protagonists, the Stan-nards? Are they based on historical fig-ures? �

With Armada’s Wake scheduled forpublication in August, we thought itwas time to catch up with Davies.

– George Jepson

Since we last discussed your work, youhave turned to the sixteenth century andthe Tudor era with your Stannard of theNavy Royal novels. What drew you tothis period?

My publisher made me an offer Icouldn’t refuse. Seriously, it’s quite along story, but in a nutshell, I was of-fered the chance to write a trilogyabout a different era. After quite a bitof discussion, we settled on the Tudorperiod, which is one of the most en-duringly popular periods in historicalfiction thanks to the likes of HenryVIII’s six wives and Mary Queen ofScots. Strangely, though, very little

NAVY ROYAL TRILOGY


INTERVIEW

He isn’t based directly on a particularindividual, but on a very real and fasci-nating group of men. Up until aboutthe 1550’s, England had been verymuch an inward-looking country trad-ing primarily with its near neighbors.Suddenly, within literally a few years,the country starts to look outward,sending ships into the Mediterranean,to Russia, to Africa, and to America.The names most closely associated withthis “turn to the sea,” are the likes ofJohn Hawkins and Francis Drake, whoappear as essential characters in the tril-ogy, but there were many others. Iwanted to develop the idea of JackStannard, whose outlook and ambi-tions are initially pretty limited, butwho starts to see a bigger world withenormous opportunities for bold sea-

farers. Later, his son Tom and hisgrandsons appear. It must have been anastonishingly exciting time. I try to re-flect that in the first two books in thetrilogy, Destiny’s Tide, set in 1544-5during King Henry VIII’s last war, andBattle’s Flood, set in 1568 against thebackdrop of the Drake/ Hawkins voy-age to the Caribbean, which is oftenseen as one of the seminal events in thebirth of the Atlantic slave trade.

Dunwich, the ancient coastal village inSuffolk, has a compelling history. Howdid you come to select it as the setting forthe Stannards’ home?

It was a real “eureka moment!” I want-ed a reasonably substantial amount ofaction to take place on land so that I

could address the big theme of reli-gious change and conflict, and spentsome time trying to think of a placewhere I could best explore that. Themoment I thought of Dunwich, whichI already knew pretty well, I knew itprovided exactly what I wanted. Al-though it’s now just a tiny village, itwas once a large city that rivaled Lon-don as a port, but it was destroyed overthe centuries by coastal erosion – in-deed, it’s sometimes described as “Eng-land’s Atlantis.” Setting scenes thereticked the box for the religious themewhich allowed me to develop anotherstoryline. The constant battle betweenDunwich and the sea was slowly – andsometimes rapidly – destroying thetown. That particular theme has a lotof contemporary resonance, too.

Where has your research for the threeStannard novels taken you?

Well, you won’t be surprised to hearthat I spent quite a lot of time in Dun-wich and the area around there. Al-though very little remains of the oldtown, it’s still possible to get a sense ofthe layout, and substantial ruins of oneof its monasteries still exist. It also hasa terrific little museum with a wonder-ful model of the town as it was beforebeing swept away, and an excellent pubwith very comfortable rooms. Apartfrom that, though, I went back toPlymouth, which features in the sec-ond and third books, carried out a lotof research in the libraries in London,and also went to Portsmouth to spenda fair bit of time in the Mary Rose mu-seum. The raised wreck is now entirelyon display, along with many of thefinds brought up from it over the years,and there’s no better place to immerseoneself in the Tudor navy! In a way,though, I wish my research had takenme a lot further. Much of the actionof the second book, Battle’s Flood, is �

“The moment I thought of Dunwich . . . Iknew it provided exactly what I wanted.”

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The remains of the Mary Rose,whose demise plays out in Da-vies’ Destiny’s Tide, are on dis-play at the Mary RoseMuseum in the PortsmouthHistoric Dockyard in England.


FEATURE

set on the coasts of West Africa and theCaribbean, but I couldn’t justify theexpense of research trips that far afield.Thankfully, there are plenty of �sources that provide excellent descrip-tions of the places I wanted to writeabout. Thank goodness for GoogleEarth, too.

As you research and write, do you findyourself “living” in the period?

Absolutely. I’m pretty sure this is how Igot into history as a child. I’ve alwayshad quite a vivid imagination and havealways found it relatively easy to visual-ize how people and places must havelooked in the past. When I was stayingin the pub in Dunwich, I’d sometimesgo for a walk in the mornings on thecliff by the monastery ruins. Lookingaround, I could imagine all the losthouses and churches which are now

under the sea, what the monasterywould have looked like and soundedlike when it was in use, Tudor sailingships come into port, the sights andsmells of the market square, and so on.The atmosphere and sense of lost gloryin Dunwich are palpable. Once I getwriting, I’m a bit of a nightmare to livewith (or so I’m told!). It takes me alittle while to switch back to the twen-

ty-first century after being deeply im-mersed in the period I'm writingabout, even during coffee and lunchbreaks.

Armada’s Wake, which will launch inAugust, is the third and final title in theStannard trilogy. Is there more to explorein fiction about Britain’s naval historyduring the time of the Tudors? �

ABOVE Ruins of Greyfriars, the Franciscanfriary built at Dunwich in the early 13th

century. RIGHT Dunwich by English artistJ. M. W. Turner circa 1827, with the friary

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INTERVIEW

Definitely. Although the three JackStannard books were conceived as atrilogy and present a complete storywith a clear ending, there’s undoubt-edly all sorts of potential for settingother books in the period. For exam-ple, the books are set twenty years apartfrom each other, so it would be quiteeasy to fit additional stories into thesequence. Moreover, people sometimesassume that the Spanish Armada is thebe-all and end-all of Queen Elizabeth’swar with Spain, and must have beenthe climax of it. Far from it. The warlasted another sixteen years after theArmada, or rather the first Armada,because there were two more, whichwere scattered by bad weather. I lookedat events at the tail end of that war inThe Rage of Fortune, the prequel to myMatthew Quinton series. However,there’s still a lot of ground that couldbe covered. Possible events are the“Counter-Armada” of 1589, an Eng-lish attack on Spain and Portugalwhich turned into a fiasco, or the lastvoyage of Drake and Hawkins in 1595-96. Who knows? There might even bepotential for a Stannard/Quintoncrossover story.

The Matthew Quinton Journals setagainst the background of the next centu-ry now number eight titles. Is there a newadventure on the horizon?

I’d love for there to be more Quin-ton books. To say that I’ve got a lot ofideas and material would be a consider-able understatement. For example,we’re coming up to the 350th anniver-saries of the third Anglo-Dutch War,which saw some of the most significantand controversial sea battles in the en-tire age of sail. At the same time there’salso the potential to go to the “Glori-ous Revolution” of 1688. And thegreat French war of the 1690’s has theadditional element of Jacobitism as a

possible source of stories. At the mo-ment it’s a case of my agent and I try-ing to convince my publisher. Still,even if he doesn’t bite, I’m determinedto continue and properly complete theseries one day fairly soon, even if itmeans self-publishing.

Your sea novels also encompass life onland, a realistic telling of the lives ofmariners like the Stannards and Quin-ton. What sources do you draw from todescribe life experiences ashore?

A vast body of source material, really,some of it consciously absorbed andsome of it subconsciously, too. I’vebeen working on naval history academ-ically for getting on for forty yearsnow, and during that time, I’ve tried toensure that I’ve always looked at thebigger picture too: what people’s livesashore were like, what towns and citieswere like, and so forth. After all, gener-ally speaking, sailors aren’t born afloatand don’t grow up afloat, they’re origi-nally from a place, a family and a com-munity, and they’ll often continue tokeep up these ties no matter how longthey’re away. In one sense, it’s quiteeasy to do this in Britain because thereare plenty of towns and villages rela-tively little changed from Tudor andStuart times, so it’s actually quite easyto get a sense of what things must havebeen like for people in the past. Forexample, the small village where I livehas several cottages that would havebeen around in Jack Stannard’s timeand a pub which is much as it wouldhave been in Matthew Quinton’s era,not to mention a fourteenth-centurychurch and a maypole. Records provethat people were dancing around themaypole’s predecessor in Elizabeth I’sreign. Apart from having a sense ofplace, which I always try to project inmy books, I’ve read far too many booksabout how people lived in the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries.

Your most recent history, Kings of theSea: Charles II, James II, and the RoyalNavy, explores developments that turnedthe Royal Navy into a permanent profes-sional fighting force. Do you have a newhistory project percolating?

Not a new project as such, but I’m us-ing the Covid lockdown to finallycomplete a book which I’ve been work-ing on intermittently for over twentyyears. It’s the history of the aristocraticfamily who dominated my home townin west Wales for a few centuries, andwere incredibly well connected but alsoout-and-out eccentrics over successivegenerations. They were friends of peo-ple ranging from Prime Minister Glad-stone to Karl Marx to Dylan Thomas,and had encounters with the likes ofNapoleon, King Frederick the Great,and the Prince Regent. One of themdevised the modern laws of boxing andathletics, too. There’s not much navalmaterial, but I’ve managed to squeezesome in all the same. Once I’ve got thisbook done, though, I’ll probably startcasting around for a new non-fictionproject. I already have a couple ofideas.

You seem to be never without a writingproject. Do you find the need to refreshyourself between projects? What sorts ofthings do you enjoy doing away fromwriting?

I must admit that I’m quite enjoying itat the moment, which is the first timein over ten years that I haven’t had atleast one project on the go and dead-lines to meet at any given moment. I’vehad a couple of pretty manic yearswhere I got my timings wrong and ef-fectively had deadlines for both a noveland a non-fiction book quite close to-gether, so I’ve vowed never to get �


INTERVIEW

into that position again. So yes, I doneed to refresh myself between books.That usually takes the form of travel.I’m not a “lie by a pool in the sun-shine” sort of person, but like to visitinteresting places and take long walks.That sort of trip isn’t feasible at themoment, but I’m lucky that there aregreat walks in the countryside directlyfrom our front door. Otherwise, I likereading historical and crime fiction,watching sports (especially rugby), lis-tening to music, and giving talks tolocal and national history groups. Iwish I could do more sailing, but welive about as far from the sea as possi-ble in England.

Seven years ago, I asked you whetheryounger generations did not appreciateBritain’s rich naval and maritime histo-ry. At the time, you seemed discouraged.Has your view changed in the interim?

I’m a little more optimistic than I wasthen. Although the situation in schoolsis still pretty dire, there’s been a consid-erable upsurge in alternative ways ofaccessing history: YouTube, podcasts,and so forth. Maritime museums in theUK have gotten a lot more inventiveabout putting out things like virtualtours, too. As a result, it’s never beeneasier for young people to access mate-rial about maritime history, which isundoubtedly starting to bear fruit. Thenumbers studying the subject at uni-versity are quite strong, and the reallyencouraging aspect of this is that a lotof young women, including a 21-yearold relative of mine, are now studyingit, rather than it being seen as verymuch a male preserve. It is all very en-couraging, but there’s still a long wayto go.

Is there anything else you would like toshare with our readers?

I was honored and humbled recently tobe elected as chair of the Society forNautical Research. It is widely regardedas the major international organizationin the field and publishes the peer-re-viewed journal The Mariner’s Mirror.The society was founded in 1910, andin its early years it was principally re-sponsible both for saving HMS Victoryand for founding the National Mari-time Museum at Greenwich. Our pa-tron is HRH Prince Philip, Duke ofEdinburgh. So it’s a great privilege tobe taking the helm of such an august

body, even if it is at a challenging time,and I hope to be able to use the posi-tion to raise awareness of maritime his-tory and heritage among the young.But the responsibility certainly won’tstop me from writing naval historicalfiction. n

The beacons are lit – the Armadais sighted off the English coast.The thrilling final installment of

the Navy Royal trilogy. 1588: The great-est naval force of its age bears downupon England. As a devastating battle looms, a na-tion holds its breath. Jack Stannard,grandson of the original Jack, is sta-tioned on Drake’s warship Revenge. Hisfather, Tom, commands his own vesseland even his grandfather is close by. Each must be ready for the greatest

battle of their lives. Everything is at stake: the fleet, the Queen,England, and behind it all something even more binding. Family.On every front they must triumph. Davies presents a intricate portrait of one of the world's mostimportant sea battles and its aftermath. Armada’s Wake is a bril-liant historical adventure, perfect for fans of Julian Stockwin, Pat-rick O’Brian, C. S. Forester, and Bernard Cornwell.

Canelo Adventure, $5.99Kindle

AUGUST

Armada’s WakeBY J. D. DAVIES

Visit J. D. Davies online atwww.jddavies.com


J ulian and I have the greatfortune to live in Ivybridge,not far from Plymouth inthe English county of

Devon. As well as being a de-lightful part of the UK in which tohave made our home, it, along

with its neighboring county, Cornwall, fea-

tures in a number of the books in the series.An abiding relationship with Neptune’s Realmis particularly strong in these two counties.

DevonIn Kydd’s day the Royal Dockyard at Plym-outh was a wonder of the age. A young Thom-as Kydd proudly showed his sister Ceciliaaround the great complex in The Admiral’sDaughter. It covered 71 acres and employed3,000 artificers and thousands of workmen. Inthe dry docks, majestic ships-of-the-line werebuilt and repaired. In other areas of the dock-yard, huge hammer forges crafted tons-inweight anchors in scenes that could have beentaken straight from the Inferno. A rope walkmanufactured the miles of rope needed by �

Kathy and Julian Stockwin work closelytogether as a creative team producing theThomas Kydd naval adventure titles. Aformer magazine editor-in-chief, Kathybrings an impressive range of skills to thetable and in this seventh of a series of fea-tures for “Quarterdeck” she shines a lighton two maritime counties in southwestEngland and their special place in theKydd series.

AUTHOR’S NOTES

Kydd’s Devon & CornwallBY KATHY STOCKWIN

Julian Stockwin in Polperro,the ancient smugglers’ lair

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the fleet. Thousands of sails were sewn in thesail loft. And a hundred and one other activi-ties were undertaken to keep the Royal Navyat Sea.

To the Eastern Seas, the latest Kydd title,opens with a crowd of onlookers peering outto sea on Plymouth Hoe, a large cliff-top,south-facing grassy open space.

There was nothing to be seen but a dismal mias-ma of grey fret, a drifting curtain of mizzle overthe listless water. It hid everything to seaward,but the crowd on the high vantage point were notdeterred from their vigil. They were not going tomiss the occasion – rumour had it that in thesedispiriting times there’d been a great clash offleets somewhere far out there. Why else wouldthe flagship, now expected hourly, be said by thedockyard to be standing in for this great navalport? Another wash of cold light rain settled on thesodden spectators who doggedly continued theirwatch. It eased off and visibility slowly extendedout. Suddenly there was a cry: out of the grey

AUTHOR’S NOTES

ABOVE English marine art-ist Nicholas Pocock creat-ed this panoramic view ofthe Plymouth Dockyard onthe eastern shore of theRiver Tamar in 1798. Cen-ter front is Dummer's1690’s stone basin anddock. On its left are onedouble and two single drydocks. On its right is the1761 double quadranglestorehouse. Behind thedocks are workshops andthe 1691 officers' terrace.On the right of the pictureare building slips on theforeshore, with the smith-ery, timber stores, mast,and boat houses beyond.The long 1760’s ropewalks and Mount Wise arevisible in the distanceoverlooking PlymouthSound.

“In Kydd’s day the Royal Dockyard at Plymouthwas a wonder of the age.”

murk firmed the unmistakable outline of aman-o’-war. ‘Clear a path, you villains!’ an elderly gentle-man with the distinct air of a mariner splut-tered, wiping the lens of a large old-fashionedsea telescope and bringing it up to train on �

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the vision. Respectfully, the press of onlookers pulled backto give him a clear view. ‘What is it, L’tenant Danby?’ ‘As I needs time t’ sight their colours!’ he repliedgruffly. ‘Well?’ ‘A frigate, is all.’ ‘Which one?’ ‘How do I know?’ Danby said irritably, find-ing it difficult to hold the big glass steady. Thenhe lowered it and paused before declaring, ‘An’ ifI’m not wrong, you’re clapping peepers on noneother than the flying Tyger 32, Cap’n Kydd!’ There was a ripple of comment. ‘Not a flagship, then?’ ‘No, you loon – she’s an escortin’ frigate. Yourflagship’s still out there on her way in.’ All eyes were on the warship as she worked intothe Sound in the fitful light airs.

Plymouth’s maritime history stretches farback in time. There is evidence that in 700 BCit was already an important port. In the 14thcentury, Plymouth was used as a base for oper-ations against France. But it was Sir FrancisDrake and his Elizabethan contemporaries,John Hawkins and Sir Walter Raleigh, whoput Plymouth on the map. Drake played hisfamous game of bowls on the Hoe in 1588

AUTHOR’S NOTES

ABOVE Plymouth Sound,with Drake Island on theright. The view is similar tothat which the crowdwaiting for the Royal Navyflagship to appear in thebeginning chapter of Tothe Eastern Seas.RIGHT Julian and KathyStockwin during a break atthe Royal William Victual-ling Yard in Stonehouse, asuburb of Plymouth, Eng-land. The yard, which isadjacent to the formerRoyal Dockyard (now HerMajesty’s Naval Base De-vonport) was the majorvictualling depot of theRoyal Navy and an impor-tant adjunct of DevonportDockyard.

while waiting for the tide to change beforesailing out to engage with the Spanish Armada. Perhaps the most celebrated expedition toleave Plymouth was that of the Pilgrim Fatherswho set sail for the New World on board May-flower in 1620. Plymouth was the departurepoint of many other famous sea ventures, in-cluding the first voyage of James Cook in 1768aboard HMS Endeavour, and the second voyageof HMS Beagle in 1831, carrying Charles Dar-win. �

“There was nothing to be seen but a dismal miasma of greyfret, a drifting curtain of mizzle over the listless water.”

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CornwallReaders have told Julian how much they’veenjoyed Kydd’s adventures in the smugglers’lair of Polperro but it’s Cornwall’s sea presence– its iron-bound coast and majestic, oftendeadly, waters – that is particularly comment-ed on. In The Admiral’s Daughter, Kydd passes theLizard, one of the sailing navy’s most iconicseamarks:

Dawn arrived overcast; the ship had stood off andon in the lee of the Lizard throughout the nightand was now closing with the coast once more, themassive iron-grey granite of Black Head loomed. There was nothing around but fishing craftand, in the distance, a shabby coastal ketch. Kydddecided to send the men to breakfast, then putabout to press on westward. This would mean acloser acquaintance of that most evocative of allthe seamarks of the south-west: the Lizard, theexact southerly tip of Great Britain and for mostdeep-ocean voyages, the last of England the mensaw on their way to war or adventure, fortune ordeath. It was, as well, the longed-for landfall forevery returning ship running down the latitude of49º 20' finally to raise the fabled headland andthe waters of home. Kydd had seen the Lizard several times, andeach experience had been different – watching itemerge leaden and stolid from curtains of rain, orseeing it dappled dark and grey in the sunshineand sighted twenty miles away – but always withfeeling and significance. ‘Do ye lay us in with th’ coast, Mr Dowse,’Kydd ordered. Curiosity was driving him to takea close-in sight of this famed place. ‘Oh – younk-er,’ he called to a rapt midshipman, ‘my compli-ments t’ Mr Renzi an’ I’d be happy t’ see him ondeck.’ He would never be forgiven if it weremissed. The master pursed his lips. ‘Aye, sir. A board tothe suth’ard will give us an offing of somethin’less’n a mile.’ ‘Thank ye,’ Kydd said gravely. With the south-westerly strengthening it was a dead lee shorearound the point and asking a lot of the master to

approach. They stood away to the south until thelast eastern headland was reached; beyond, theAtlantic swell crowding past the Lizard was re-sulting in ugly, tumbling seas that put Teazer intoviolent motion, the wind now with real strengthin it, producing long white streaks downwindfrom the crests. The land receded as the offing was made, thenapproached again after they went about on theother tack, the seas almost directly abeam causingthe brig to roll deeply. ‘Call down th’ lookouts,’Kydd snapped. Even at forty feet, with the motionmagnified by height the situation for the men inthe foretop would be dangerous and near unen-durable. Dowse pointed inshore where the sea met theland in a continuous band of explosions of white.‘Man-o’-war reef, the Quadrant yonder,’ he indi-cated a cluster of dark rocks standing out to seaand in furious altercation with the waves. ‘An’Lizard Point.’ There it was: the southernmost point of Eng-land and the place Kydd had always sighted be-fore from the sanctity and safety of thequarterdeck of a ship-of-the-line. He clung to aweather shroud and took it all in, the abruptthump of waves against the bow and a secondlater the stinging whip of spray leaving a salt tasteon his tongue. They eased round to the north-west and intothe sweeping curve of Mount’s Bay, the last beforethe end of England itself. The scene was as dra-matic as any Kydd had met with at sea: complete-ly open to the hardening south-westerly and longAtlantic swell piling in, the rugged coastline was asmother of white. n

AUTHOR’S NOTES

Visit the Stockwinsonline at

www.julianstockwin.com

ABOVE The Lizard Peninsu-la along the Cornish coastis the most southerly pointin England. The Lizard'scoast was hazardous toshipping long before Kydd’sdays. The seas around thepeninsula were historicallyknown as the “Graveyardof Ships.”

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M any historic “hotspots”have experienced morethan their fair share ofhistory, and the top

one hundred surely includes the area aroundPortsmouth, Gosport, the Isle of Wight, andSpithead in southern England. Just imagine the incredible scenes of shippingat Spithead, the protected anchorage between

the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth, in the Ageof Sail. One day in particular, 29 August 1782,became memorable for the sinking of what wasthen the Royal Navy’s greatest warship, the100-gun three-decker Royal George, about oneand three-quarter miles south-west of SouthseaCastle. In our last book, Gibraltar: The GreatestSiege in British History, we featured this shock-ing disaster in the prologue, adding further de-tails in a later chapter, in order to show thatthe 1779 to 1783 Great Siege of Gibraltar (partof the American Revolution) was played out asmuch at sea as on land. In the summer of1782, the Royal George was anchored at �

Royal GeorgeBY ROY AND LESLEY ADKINS

FEATURE

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ABOVE English marine art-ist John Cleveley the Elder

(c. 1712 – 21 May 1777)created a painting depict-

ing a fictitious combina-tion of two events set in

Deptford Dockyard insoutheast London: the

launch of the HMS Cam-bridge (left) on 21 October

1755, and HMS RoyalGeorge (right), a 100-gunfirst-rate ship of the line,

which was actuallylaunched at Woolwich

Roy and Lesley Adkins are co-authors of Jack Tar, TheWar for All the Oceans, Nelson’s Trafalgar, Gibral-tar and Jane Austen’s England. They describe herehow the mighty Royal George suddenly disappeared insight of everyone, with the loss of 1,000 souls.

The Sinking of the Royal Navy’s Greatest Warship

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Spithead with numerous other warships, store-ships and merchant vessels, all preparing to re-lieve Gibraltar, which was in desperate need ofsupplies. The British fortress was under siege bySpanish and French forces, and the situationwas critical, because France and Spain wereabout to launch a massive attack. The Royal George had accompanied two pre-vious relief convoys, the first one led by Admi-ral Sir George Brydges Rodney in early 1780and the second one by Vice-Admiral GeorgeDarby in April 1781. On both occasions, theRoyal George’s flag-captain was John Bourmas-ter, serving under the popular Rear-Admiral SirJohn Lockhart Ross. When Admiral Lord Rich-ard Howe was put in charge of the third reliefconvoy, the Royal George became the flagship ofthe 64-year-old Rear-Admiral Richard Kem-penfelt, one of the Royal Navy’s most highlyregarded officers, responsible for radicallychanging the system of naval signaling. MartinWaghorn was appointed as his flag-captain. On that fatal August day, the weather wascalm and sunny, ideal for last-minute repairsand the final loading of supplies. A great deal ofhurried activity was seen throughout the fleet,which was expected to sail any day, and Ports-mouth dockyard plumbers were waiting totackle a faulty water pipe on the starboard sideof the Royal George. In order to tilt the vesselslightly and expose the pipe that was below thewaterline, the guns on the port (larboard) sidewere run out so as to shift their weight. While the plumbers began their starboardwork, the Lark lighter with a final consignmentof rum was lashed to the port side, and the sea-man James Ingram began to help haul theheavy barrels in slings to the upper deck. TheRoyal George had already been supplied with sixmonths of provisions, and Ingram thought thatthe pipe should have been repaired before theiron shot was loaded. This extra weight of bar-rels while the ship was tilted now caused thelower gunports to become almost level with thewater, and the sea began lapping in with everywave. At first nobody was concerned, but usedthe opportunity for some sport, “there beingmice in the lower part of the ship, which weredisturbed by the water which dashed in, they

were hunted in the water by the men, andthere had been a rare game going on”. The number of barrels on the upper deckincreased, and so too did the amount of waterpouring in, and the carpenter twice warned thelieutenant of the watch, but was rebuffed. Asudden slight squall then sent seawater gushingin. Spotting the danger, officers cried out toright the ship, but it was too late. CaptainWaghorn tried to warn Admiral Kempenfelt,who was in his cabin, but the door stuck fast.The speed of the disaster was incredible. HenryThomas Colebrooke was waiting on the beachfor a boat to take him to a storeship, at the �

FEATURE

ABOVE A depiction of thesinking of the HMS RoyalGeorge on 29 August 1782at Spithead. The illustratedappeared in the IllustratedNaval History of Great Brit-ain, from the Earliest Peri-od to the Present Time; aReliable Record of theMaritime Rise and Prog-ress of England by EdwinJohn Brett (1827–1895),which was published in1871. RIGHT The RoyalGeorge starts her finalfateful roll in this Victori-an-era drawing.

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start of a journey to India, when he heard ashout: “Where is the Royal George?” He turned,and the ship had disappeared. The RoyalGeorge literally fell over sideways, on top of theLark, then sank rapidly to the sea bottom, be-fore settling in a more upright position, leavingthe masts visible. Today, for anyone sailing by ferry fromPortsmouth to Ryde on the Isle of Wight,there is no indication that the route passesclose to what was once the shipwreck site. Atleast 900 people drowned in just a few min-utes, possibly more than a thousand, includingmany crew members, marines, some dockyardworkers, numerous merchants and traders,wives saying their farewells, often with youngchildren, and hundreds of prostitutes, some-thing that was in the past only coyly refer-enced. The surrounding ships sent boats to try torescue survivors, but for many the wreck be-came their last resting place. Admiral Kempen-felt’s body was probably trapped inside thecabin and was never found. Hundreds of bod-ies were swept away by the strong tides, andnumerous corpses were washed up at Ryde andPortsmouth. Little effort was made to recoverbodies from the sea in order to bury them, as itwas simply not customary unless a financialincentive was offered. The seaman Samuel Kel-

ly of the packet boat Grenville witnessed whathappened while moored nearby:

“. . . the dead bodies belonging to the RoyalGeorge floated and passed our ship both with ebband flood tide; many we perceived on the shore atlow water, and some I saw fastened by ropes to thebuoy of a ship at Spithead. No reward being of-fered for burying the dead for several days, fewpeople troubled themselves about them . . . Ourship lay off Ryde, exactly in the stream of ebb �

ABOVE A contemporaryillustration of RoyalGeorge resting at the bot-tom of the Solent with hermasts sticking up from thesurface. The watercolorwas originally described as“Spithead, with the exactsituation and appearanceof the ‘Royal George’,wrecked – with above 600people on board – 29 Au-gust 1782.” RIGHT Vice-Admiral Richard Kempen-felt (1718 – 29 August1782) gained a reputationas a naval innovator. Hewas shown in a flag offi-cer's undress uniform.Kempenfelt is best knownfor his victory against theFrench at the Second Bat-tle of Ushant in 1781 andfor his death when his flag-ship, the Royal George, ac-cidentally sank at Ports-mouth the following year.The painting is by an un-known artist.

FEATURE

“Admiral Kempenfelt’s bodywas probably trapped inside the

cabin and was never found.”

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church, but the more ornate one has disap-peared. Salvage work from the submerged upperdeck of the Royal George began straightaway,using a vessel with one large and two small div-ing bells, which Kelly spent time watching:

“The principal bell, in which was a surgeon of anEast Indiaman, with a Lascar (native of Bengal),was very large, made like a porter vat, the largestend downward. Round this a quantity of pig leadwas fastened on, to sink it; there were small roundglass windows to admit light near the top, and alarge hole in the bottom for the men to enter, un-der which a board was hung with chains, onwhich the men stood. On sinking the bell, thewater rose within, as far as the air pent up wouldlet it, which might be about breast high on themen.”

Kelly said that the two smaller bells wereraised and lowered as a means of supplying thelarge bell with fresh air and getting rid of foulair. Once in the water, the seaman swamaround the upper deck and secured ropes toanything useful: “The Lascar went out of the �

that came from the wreck, we had therefore anopportunity of seeing the dead in vast numbersfloating by us.”

At that time, Ryde was little more than a fish-ing village, which the antiquary Sir Harry En-glefield visited in 1816. He asked an oldfisherman about a marshy meadow which ap-peared to have rows of graves: “The man in alow tone, and with a sad look, said, ‘They aregraves; the bodies cast ashore after the loss of theRoyal George were buried here. We did notmuch like drawing a net hereabout for someweeks afterwards; we were always bringing up acorpse’.” The graves have long gone, but in1965 a monument was unveiled by Earl Mount-batten of Burma, who was Admiral of the Fleet.In 2006 the original plaque was moved to a newmemorial garden further along the Esplanade. The corpses that washed up at Portsmouthwere taken by cart to St Mary’s church at Ports-ea, to be buried in a mass grave, and two monu-ments were erected. Decades after the disaster,thousands of people were still visiting thechurchyard, but in 1935 it was converted into apublic garden. One memorial is now inside the

ABOVE LEFT The sub-merged wreck of the RoyalGeorge, with salvage oper-ations underway. One ofthe first people on thescene with a diving back-ground was Thomas Spald-ing, a surgeon on an EastIndiaman. He approachedthe Admiralty and pro-posed that he and hisbrother Charles be allowedto salvage valuable storesand ordnance from thewreck using his brother’sdiving bell.ABOVE RIGHT CharlesSpalding’s diving bell. Thetwo smaller bells werelikely used to bring freshair supplies to the mainbell via the tube running toit from the small bell onthe left.

FEATURE

“Salvage work from the submerged upper deck of theRoyal George began straightaway . . .”

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bell to inspect the situation of the things ondeck, and received air from the bell by meansof a leather hood covering his head with a hoseto the air in the machine.” Attempts to raise the actual wreck were ob-structed for fear of disproving the court-mar-tial, which wrongly claimed that the timberswere rotten, when the real cause was negligence– heeling a fully laden ship with the additionalweight of several hundred visitors. In 1783William Tracey, a diver and ship broker fromPortsea, managed to raise the Lark, but everyobstacle was put in his way when dealing withthe Royal George, and he went bankrupt. After afew decades, such resistance petered out, andfurther salvage work was done by the Deanebrothers from 1834 to 1836. The wreck hadbeen for too long a hazard to shipping, and sofrom 1839 to 1843 Colonel Charles WilliamPasley of the Royal Engineers cleared the site.His methods were brutal, as he blew the wreckapart with explosives and collected whateverfloated to the surface, with divers salvaging ev-erything possible. Much of the timber was publicly sold by theDockyard and turned into keepsakes. One ad-vertisement in 1841 was for “A few sets of Ta-ble Knives, &c., manufactured from the ironand wood recovered from the wreck of theRoyal George, sunk at Spithead, 1782.” Theprevious year, in 1840, a miniature book (4¼inches in height) was published at Portsea, withwooden covers made from salvaged timbers. It

proved so popular that it went through severaleditions. The tragedy was also remembered in poetry.William Holloway is best known for his poemabout the 1786 wreck of the East IndiamanHalsewell, but in November 1840 he wrote“Lines on Receiving a Piece of the Wreck of theRoyal George,” which was printed at the end ofthe book and begins:

“Poor fragment of a mighty structure – wonFrom thy dark charnel-house beneath the wave;There thou with human bones hast made thy bedFifty-eight summers, in thy watery grave.”

The Royal George was the most famous ship-wreck in the world until it was eclipsed by theTitanic, and at the time it caused a great deal ofshock, not just in Britain but further afield. AsJohn Byng (who later became Viscount Tor-rington) said on hearing the news, “we sat long,prosing over the American War . . . as also onthe fatal loss of the Royal George man of war, acalamity that affects every bosom, and shocksthe most obdurate heart.” n

ABOVE LEFT A copy of theseventh edition (circa1844) of the miniaturebook about the RoyalGeorge, which was boundwith covers made fromwood salvaged from theship.ABOVE RIGHT The memo-rial unveiled by EarlMountbatten in 1965 atRyde on the Isle of Wight.RIGHT English historiansRoy and Lesley Adkins.

FEATURE

Visit the Adkins online atwww.adkinshistory.com.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Larcum MudgeBY PHILIP K. ALLAN

Independent, US Trade Paperback$19.50

AVAILABLE NOW

O nce again, English novelistPhilip K. Allan sails intotreacherous waters in Larcum

Mudge, the eighth installment chroni-cling Captain Alexander Clay’s careerin His Majesty’s Royal Navy. A warm, lush night in the MonaPassage off Hispaniola turns murder-ous aboard the Royal Navy sloop-of-war Peregrine. A few months later,Clay’s frigate Griffin is out of the dock-yard at Plymouth when he receives asummons from the Admiralty in Lon-don. Proof surfaces that mutineers seizedthe Peregrine and killed her officers incold blood before selling the ship tothe French at Guadeloupe somemonths earlier. An angry Earl St Vin-cent, the First Sea Lord, dispatchesClay and Griffin to recapture or de-stroy the ship. “Go and wipe that stain on our hon-our clean,” he demands. “While it re-

mains in French hands, it will be aconstant affront to the dignity of ourking.” While Clay is in London, a smalldetail from Griffin travels up the Ply-mouth Road to Tavistock, seeking vol-unteer recruits. Among the newcomersis a prosperous-looking seaman calledLarcum Mudge, who may not be allthat he seems. Allan’s portrayal of the late eigh-teenth and early nineteenth centuriesreveals a sweeping intimacy with Nel-son’s Navy – officers and Jack Tarsalike – and the Georgian period. Under sail and bound for the Lee-ward Islands, Griffin captures a Frenchprivateer carrying a lucrative cargo and,surprisingly, Royal Navy desertersamong her crew. Arriving at EnglishHarbour, Clay soon realizes that hiscommission faces perilous obstacles. Guadeloupe, where Peregrine, possi-bly changed in appearance, may befound, is an armed enemy sanctuary.Pointe-à-Pitre, the harbor on the islandwith facilities to accommodate theship, “lies at the bottom of a difficultbay that is full of reefs and islands,”cautions Rear-Admiral Sir GeorgeMontague. “There is only one practicalentrance for shipping, and that is pro-tected by some notable fortifications.” Montague offers “little assistance”beyond a sloop captained by a peculiar,slightly cantankerous bibliophile with afoul temper, deceitful interests, and apropensity for duels if that’s not formi-dable enough. Against these odds, Clay and theGriffins carry out their mission againstthe French and Peregrine. Rousing seabattles, smuggling, corruption, and anominous threat from Clay’s past com-bine in a page-turning narrative thatcharacterizes Allan’s novels. And throughout, there’s the unset-tling question, “Who is LarcumMudge?” n

Barbarians on anAncient Sea

BY WILLIAM WESTBROOK

McBooks Press, US Trade Paperback$18.95

AVAILABLE NOW

aught in a savage storm, a shipbound from Boston to Algiersfounders on a barrier reef on

the north coast of Bermuda. A chestfilled with gold coins plunges “down toa blackness even darker than the sky.” Weathering the same tempest two-hundred miles to the southwest, Nich-olas Fallon’s privateer schooner Rascalrescues the crew of the American sloopLiberty struggling to stay afloat. Captained by New England fisher-man Caleb Visser, the lost ship wasbound for Algeria in company with theschooner Jocelyn, commanded by hisbrother, Alwin, when separated by thegale. The sloop carried $12,000 in goldcoins to ransom their father, enslavedby Dey Mustapha Pasha in Algiers. Fallon, sailing for Ezra Somers’ SaltCompany, protects its merchant shipswhile also carrying a letter of marque �


Rocks and ShoalsBY CHRIS DURBIN

Old Salt Press, US Trade Paperback$13.23

AVAILABLE NOW

n early 1759, the Seven Years’War is into its fourth year. Cap-tain Edward Carlisle, fresh from

the fall of Louisbourg and his son’sbirth at Williamsburg, is ordered northto take part in the blockade of the St.Lawrence River. Fate has not been kind to GeorgeHolbrooke. Returning to Englandfrom France after a prisoner exchange,he learns that his sloop-of-war Kestrelhas a new commander. With no shipavailable for him, he is dispatched toNorth America to command boats forthe British advance on Fort Niagara. A chance encounter at sea off Savan-nah brings friends Carlisle and Hol-brooke together for the first time in ayear, allowing them to share Christmasin Williamsburg before embarking ontheir separate missions. By April in the new year, Carlisle’smood is “foul” as he had spent “threemonths swinging around his anchor at

Halifax.” Rear-Admiral Phillip Durellmisinterprets the British squadron’soriginal orders to patrol the Gulf of St.Lawrence, delaying implementation bytwo months. Meanwhile, a French convoy withcritical supplies for Quebec breaksthrough late seasonal ice into the St.Lawrence without a challenge fromBritish warships. When Vice-Admiral Sir CharlesSaunders, Commander-in-Chief NorthAmerica, arrives in Halifax and repeatshis directive to Durell, Carlisle andMedina are soon at sea, bound for theSt. Lawrence. Moving a fleet up the river towardQuebec, with a battalion of soldiersunder Major-General James Wolfe,and no up-to-date charts to safely navi-gate requires a survey of the waterway.As the lead ship, Medina is assigned “atall man in the plain blue coat of a sail-ing master” named James Cook. Theyoung man acquired the key to NewFrance with a “single gold coin.” Chris Durbin places the readeraboard Medina, along with Carlisle andCook, providing a “you-are-there” ex-perience. The challenges – natural andmade-made – are significant, as theship navigates toward Quebec. Sand-bars, shoals, and currents hinder theadvance, while withering musket andartillery fire threaten British vessels andlives from French positions along theshore. Drawing closer to Quebec and en-gagement with enemy troops com-manded by Lieutenant-GeneralLouis-Joseph de Montcalm on thePlains of Abraham, intrigue entanglesCarlisle when a French colonial soldierappears aboard the British flagship,Sutherland. Durbin’s latest chronicle of the Sev-en Years’ War at sea is a brilliant tellingof Britannia’s ascent to rule the wavesfor over a century. n

from the British Admiralty, allowinghim to attack Great Britain’s adversar-ies – the French and Spanish – on thehigh seas “and not be hung as a pirate.” Anchoring in St. George’s harbor onBermuda’s northern coast, Fallon issoon entangled in the Visser affair.Across the Atlantic, seventy-year-oldWilhelm Visser struggles on the quaysunder a searing Mediterranean sun,unloading ships carrying pirated goods.Physically and emotionally broken bycaptivity, he harbors little hope of es-cape. The elder Visser was en route to thelucrative Mediterranean market with acargo of cod when he and his ship fellto Barbary pirates and were turned overto Pasha. The corsairs’ leader, AchilleZabana, knows only evil and cruelty. A Frenchman by a Turkish motherand unknown father, Zabana leads aband of European renegades. The brig-ands prey on shipping in the Mediter-ranean, capturing wealthy and influen-tial passengers, who Pasha enslaves forprofit. Once a slave himself, Zabana, is adepraved madman sailing a well-armedxebec aptly called Serpent. A lethal kill-ing machine lashed to the deck merci-lessly terrorizes random victims andthose he perceives as enemies. A chance encounter between Rascaland Serpent thrusts Fallon and Zabanainto a singular conflict that carriesacross the seas to the squalid slave pensand narrow, dusty streets of Algiers. Westbrook’s scintillating sea story ischock-a-block with vivid ship-to-shipactions, captured prizes, search forsunken gold, a running battle with aBarbary xebec in the Mediterranean,and an impossible mission in NorthAfrica.

Barbarians on an Ancient Sea raisesthe Nicholas Fallon adventures to newheights, an engaging thriller from theoutset. n

BOOK REVIEWS


BOOK REVIEWS

A Furious SkyBY ERIC J. DOLIN

Liveright Publishing, US Hardback$29.95

AVAILABLE NOW

S taggering through massive seasoff Florida’s northeast coast inthe early morning hours of Sep-

tember 21, 1938, the British luxuryliner RMS Corinthia “radioed in anextremely low barometric pressurereading” to the US Weather Bureau inWashington, DC. At the bureau, the report confirmedCharles H. Pierce’s concern that thestorm – a hurricane – was “extremelypowerful and would remain so forquite a while.” Indeed, the stormveered and swept north, coming ashoreon Long Island and roaring into south-ern New England, “packing winds ofup to 120 mph.”

A Furious Sky, Eric Jay Dolin’s epichistory, brims with compelling humanstories and vivid descriptions of thedestruction wrought by hurricanes dat-ing back five centuries to Europeanvoyages to explore and settle the NewWorld.

The Great Hurricane of 1938, nick-named “The Long Island Express” byjournalists, was one of the deadliestand most destructive to batter the re-gion. Actress Katherine Hepburn wasamong those surprised by the rapidlyadvancing storm. After a leisurely morning swim atthe family’s waterfront home in Say-brook, Connecticut, and a round ofgolf, she was swimming again at thebeach when the wind and surf in-creased dramatically. Before long, thelovely Victorian house, torn asunder,“just sailed away.” Dolin’s crisp chronicle breezes alonglike the frontal winds in a tropical dis-turbance – the first stage of a develop-ing hurricane – starting over fivehundred years ago with the early voy-ages and expeditions to the Americas.Europeans seeking to explore and settlethe New World risked sailing into cata-clysmic storms at sea, often at a signifi-cant loss of life, ships, and treasurewithout the benefit of forecasts toguide them. Meteorology, or the science ofweather, evolved through history, whilehurricanes continued to wreak “death,destruction, and despair” across theseas and landmasses. Dolin relates thesedreadful storms’ impact on the nationand the lives of individuals throughengaging contemporary accounts. By the mid-1800’s, through the sci-ence of meteorology, man’s under-standing of nature’s powerful force wasbeginning to push forward. But essen-tial advances came in the decades aheadwith the development of “communica-tion, aviation, computer, and satellitetechnology.” Eric Jay Dolin’s moving narrativebreathes life into a piece of the Ameri-can experience that continues to influ-ence our existence from one hurricaneseason to the next. n

– George Jepson

Online BookSources

McBooks Presswww.mcbooks.com

Rowman & Littlefieldwww.rowman.com

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Geoffrey Huband


A Devil of a FixBY MARCUS PALLISER

It is 1702, and in the lawless CaribbeanSea, young Matthew Loftus captains hisship, the Cornelius, and vows to engagein honest trade rather than piracy andplunder. But his crew lusts after thespoils that their fast, well-armed vesselcould win, and discontent begins torumble. Meanwhile, Loftus is pursued bythe English Navy on a false charge ofmutiny. Matthew must evade the King’sships and escape the attention of ruthlessprivateers. His only chance of pardonrests with a secret almanac that promisesthat elusive prize – to solve the Longi-tude Problem. But is the almanac what itseems? Through wild gales and fierce seabattles, uprisings and reversals of fortune,Matthew sails towards victory.

McBooks Press, $18.95US Trade PaperbackSEPTEMBER

To the Eastern SeasBY JULIAN STOCKWIN

With Bonaparte held to a stalemate inEurope, the race to empire is now re-sumed. Britain’s ambitions turn to theSpice Islands, the Dutch East Indies,where Admiral Pellew has been sent toconfront the enemy’s vastly rich holdingsin these tropical islands. Captain SirThomas Kydd joins reinforcements tosnatch these for the British Crown.The two colonial masters of India andthe East Indies face each other in mortalstriving for the region – there can be on-ly one victor to hold all the spoils. Thecolonial genius, Stamford Raffles, be-lieves Britain should strike at the verycenter of Dutch spice production, theMoluccas. Kydd, allying himself to thiscause, conspires to lead a tiny force to atriumphant conclusion.

Hodder & Stoughton, £8.99 / $15.99UK Trade PaperbackSEPTEMBER UK / OCTOBER US

MARITIME FICTION

The Midgard SerpentBY JAMES L. NELSON

Thorgrim Night Wolf, now somewhereon the south coast of Engla-land, may becloser to his goal of returning home thanhe has been since reaching Ireland yearsbefore, but he is still very, very far away.His son Harald, however, has ambitionsbeyond just getting home. Given com-mand of one of the ships in the fleet,Harald sees a chance to put his courageon display, unleashing consequences thatwill lead Thorgrim into a fight againstthe powerful armies of Wessex, a fight hedoes not want. As Thorgrim struggles tokeep his men alive, his eldest son Oddleads the resistance to King Halfdan’sruthless attempts to expand his rule overNorway.

St. Martin’s Press, $27.99US Trade PaperbackAVAILABLE NOW


WormwoodGoes to WarBY DAVID DONACHIE

1793: Lord Charles Wormwood’s fatherinforms him, with war looming, he is tobe a soldier. Thwarted, the Earl decidesto send him to sea, in a ship under thecommand of his Uncle, Captain HarryHamilton. He outlines how he will en-sure his nephew’s progress, regardless ofhis ignorance of life at sea. He will take ashort cruise aboard the sloop HMSChilders, followed by a rigged examina-tion, which will see him promoted tolieutenant. A peaceful cruise turns nasty.The French open fire, exposing Worm-wood to danger – not that he knows it.He is helped by Kissock, who’ll becomehis servant and ignorance provides hissalvation. With no idea why, Worm-wood’s is hailed as a hero.

Two Fingers Books, $15.92US Trade PaperbackAVAILABLE NOW

When DutyWhispers Low

BY JOHN J. GOBBELL

The US Navy has won Guadalcanal.But a brilliant Japanese admiral will stopat nothing to get it back. He alreadymasterminded the Pearl Harbor attacks.And to seize Guadalcanal, he has a farmore devastating plan, one that will callupon every Japanese military asset in thePacific. The Allies have top secrettechnology that has never been used. Itseffectiveness is uncertain. But for Lieu-tenant Commander Todd Ingram, itmay be his only hope. In a desperatebattle against an onslaught of Japaneseair raids, Todd must fight witheverything he has. If he fails, the U.S.Navy won’t just lose Guadalcanal, it willbe crippled forever.

Severn River Publishing, $19.99US Trade PaperbackAVAILABLE NOW

MARITIME FICTION

At the Edge of HonorBY ROBERT N. MACOMBER

The year is 1863. The Civil War is leav-ing its bloody trail across the nation asPeter Wake, born and bred in the snowyNorth, joins the U.S. Navy as a volun-teer officer and arrives in steamy Floridafor duty with the East Gulf BlockadingSquadron. The idealistic Peter Wake hashandled boats before, but he’s new to thepolitics and illicit liaisons that war createsamong men. Assigned to the Rosalie, atiny, armed sloop, Captain Wake com-mands a group of seasoned seamen on aseries of voyages to seek and arrest Con-federate blockade-runners and sympa-thizers, from Florida’s coastal watersthrough to near the remote out-islands ofthe Bahamas.

McBooks Press, $16.95US Trade PaperbackAVAILABLE NOW


MARITIME FICTION

Harry Ludlow, forced out of the RoyalNavy, becomes a privateer in partner-ship with his younger brother James.But for the Ludlows, murder and in-trigue take more of their time thanhunting fat trading vessels. Harry andJames find themselves aboard the Na-vy's 74-gun Magnanime. In commandis a captain with whom Harry hascrossed swords in the past. WhenJames is found standing over the bodyof a dead officer, Harry’s feud shiftsinto the background.


Arriving in the squalid, seething port ofGenoa, Harry Ludlow and his partnerand younger brother, James, find it atinderbox of tension, fed by the discov-ery of a hanged British sea captain andpacks of English and French sailors ateach other's throats.


Returning to England, Harry andJames become embroiled in a viciousstruggle between rival smugglers playedout in the English Channel. Witnessesto a bloody confrontation, they flee toDeal only to find that, behind its pic-turesque facade, the town is a haven fortraders in contraband, seething withcorruption and violence.


1 - The Devil’s Own Luck 2 - The Dying Trade 3 - A Hanging Matter

The Privateersman MysteriesBY DAVID DONACHIE


As war spreads across the globe, HarryLudlow joins the struggle for the rich-est trade in the world. When half hiscrew is illegally pressed into the RoyalNavy by the vicious Captain Toner,Harry sets off in pursuit. Toner’s shipreaches the West Indies with Harryclose behind, and they sail into a mael-strom of piracy, corruption, and mur-der stirred up by a French privateer.


The discovery of an abandoned Span-ish merchant ship off the coast ofAmerica plunges the Ludlows into afar-reaching conspiracy fueled by jeal-ousy, ambition and nationalistic fervor.The Bucephalas lies trapped under thegaping muzzles of the 32-pounderSpanish guns of New Orleans’ harborfort. It quickly becomes clear that thecorridors of the governor's residenceare just as busy with treachery, dou-bled-dealing, and murder as the backalleys of the sweltering city outside.


The long-awaited return of the Bu-cephalas to the safety of the CinquePorts is interrupted by a disastrous en-gagement in the English Channel. Thelooming shape of a merchantman be-calmed in fog presents an almost irre-sistible allure. But for Harry Ludlowand his battle-weary crew, the pursuitof one last easy prize leads to a desper-ate fight.


4 - An Element of Chance 5 - The Scent of Betrayal 6 - A Game of Bones

The Privateersman MysteriesBY DAVID DONACHIE

MARITIME HISTORY


Hornblower’sHistorical Shipmates

BY HEATHER NOEL-SMITH

This book sets out the lives of seventeen“young gentlemen” who were midship-men under Captain Sir Edward Pellew.Aboard HMS Indefatigable they fought acelebrated action in 1797 against theFrench ship of the line Les Droits del'Homme. C. S. Forester placed his fa-mous hero, Horatio Hornblower, aboardPellew’s ship as a midshipman. Thisbook tells the actual stories of Horn-blower’s real-life shipmates. From diversebackgrounds, aristocratic and humble,they bonded closely with Pellew, learnedtheir naval leadership skills from him,and benefited from his patronage and hisfriendship in their varied careers.

Boydell Press, £25.00UK HardbackAVAILABLE NOW

Sons of the WavesBY STEPHEN TAYLOR

British maritime history in the age of sailis full of the deeds of officers like Nelsonbut has given little voice to plain,“illiterate” seamen. Stephen Taylor drawsmemoirs, letters, and naval records topresent these men in their own words. Inthis account, ordinary seamen are farfrom the hapless sufferers of the pressgangs. Proud and spirited, learned intheir own fashion, with robust opinionsand the courage to challenge over-weening authority, they stand out fromtheir less adventurous compatriots.Taylor demonstrates how the sailor wasthe engine of British prosperity andexpansion. These “sons of the waves”held the nation’s destiny in theircalloused hands.

Yale University Press, $30.00US HardbackAVAILABLE NOW

MARITIME HISTORY

Enemy of AllMankind

BY STEVEN JOHNSON

Henry Every was the seventeenth centu-ry’s most notorious pirate. The presspublished wildly popular – and wildlyinaccurate – reports of his nefarious ad-ventures. The British government offeredenormous bounties for his capture, aliveor dead. But Steven Johnson argues thatEvery’s most lasting legacy was his inad-vertent triggering of a major shift in theglobal economy. He focuses on the at-tack on an Indian treasure ship by Everyand his crew and its surprising repercus-sions across time and space. It’s the grip-ping tale one of the most lucrative crimesin history, the first international man-hunt, and the trial of the seventeenthcentury.

Riverhead Books, $28.00US HardbackAVAILABLE NOW

MARITIME ART


T he painting depicts the Hancock of1776, a frigate in the ContinentalNavy. If I had to pick the most in-teresting era for me in terms of na-

val history, it would be the War of Indepen-dence, the “mouse that roared,” thanks to thestupidity, ignorance, and arrogance in equalmeasures of George III’s reign on this side ofthe pond. For a ramshackle bond of like-mind-ed brothers to join forces and fight, “Goliath”still amazes me. I am driven to depict in oil on canvas at 48”x36” many of the vessels on opposite sides of theconflict. Before I commence work, I study con-temporary manuscripts and plans, and if the

original ship survives or a replica was built, I’llgrab a sail or just sit there dockside, agog at thebeauty of man’s creation. I start with a pen-and-ink drawing for a pre-paratory sketch, and then I “go at it,” markingand stabbing the canvas with an odd collectionof tools until some sign of life appears. It usual-ly takes me up to a year to complete the fin-ished painting, with layer upon layer of detailfor the rigging and deck details, which is oftencovered over by a forlorn sail.

– Tony Fernandes

View Tony Fernandes’s maritime art online:www.tonyfernandes.co.uk.

Tony FernandesContinental FrigateHANCOCK - 1776

48” by 36” Oil on Canvas

Tony Fernandes

www.mcbooks.com / www.rowman.com

THE DESTINATION FORNAUTICAL FICTION

PHILIP HAZARD NOVELSBY V. A. STUART

Quarterdeck · first book, and I knew that was it, so I moved the house in my mind to Falmouth.”...

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Transcript of Quarterdeck · first book, and I knew that was it, so I moved the house in my mind to Falmouth.”...