J D Davies - Historian and Author

The website and blog of naval historian and bestselling author J D Davies

J D Davies

Drum in a Box

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There are several legends regarding what might happen if and when Britain comes to the point of its ultimate crisis.

One is that the ravens will abandon the Tower of London, thus causing its walls – and, indeed, the entire country – to collapse. But rejoice, this particular catastrophe has been averted, if only just, by the recent arrival of baby ravens!

(Coming soon to a social media platform near you: baby raven birther conspiracy theories.)

Then there’s the one about the return of King Arthur and his knights, said to be slumbering in a cave until their country calls them in its hour of direst need.

Now, you can call me an old-fashioned fuddy duddy, but somehow I can’t see a possibly mythical sixth century warlord whose entire raison d’etre was slaughtering European immigrants being much use when it comes to sorting out potential technological solutions to the Irish border problem.

And then there’s Drake’s drum, which is meant to beat when, umm, the country recalls the vain, virulently anti-Catholic, slave trading old seadog in its hour of direst need, presumably to compete with King Arthur in the final of Britain’s Got Mythical National Saviours.

At this point, let me state unequivocally that the content of this post up to this point is not connected in any way to the recent European election results in the UK, nor to the fact that the UK is currently due to leave the EU on 31 October, come what may. As you know, you’ll never get politics on this blog, and certainly not the B-word.

However, it may be worth noting that even if Drake’s drum is beating like crazy at the moment, it’s very unlikely that anyone will hear it – least of all old Sir Francis, sleeping ‘in his hammock an’ a thousand mile away / (Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?) / Slung atween the roundshot in Nombre Dios bay / An’ dreamin’ arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe’. This is because the drum is currently locked away in some storeroom or other, having recently been moved from its home of over half a century, Buckland Abbey, the former monastic estate that Drake purchased. Why? Well, the drum was owned for all that time by Plymouth museum, and they’ve now recalled it for eventual display in their new facility, opening next year, of which more below. (It’s worth pointing out here that the drum in question is a replica – the real one has been in storage for many years in any case, so either way, the country is totally done for.) That’s left a literal and metaphorical hole in the story being presented at Buckland itself; without its most iconic item, what can the house offer to its visitors? It was this thorny question that took me to Buckland last week, to join a workshop containing National Trust staff and volunteers, fellow naval historians, and other interested parties, the whole being co-ordinated by those behind the University of Oxford’s splendid ‘Making Maritime Memories’ project.

Buckland Abbey

(Warning – grumpy old man rant and digression follows; you may wish to skip to the end of the next paragraph.)

The new facility in Plymouth, alluded to above, will contain a museum, the archives, and lots of exciting features, such as a stunning collection of naval figureheads. The city undoubtedly needs such an asset, and clearly always has in the forty-odd years that I’ve known it well – its lack of recognition of its naval heritage, certainly when compared to Portsmouth, has been a much-discussed issue in the area, and in maritime history circles, for many years. Now, you might think that it would make sense to call this new building something like the Plymouth History Centre – but no, in this day and age, you can’t have monikers that actually tell you what a place is and what it contains. Instead, you’ve got to have some right-on name conceived by one of the lesser crew members of the B Ark (see here if you don’t get that analogy), which bears as little resemblance as possible to the actual purpose of the building and the heritage of the area. So the new facility in Plymouth is named The Box. Let me repeat that. The Box. Good people of Plymouth, you know what you have to do: if enough people start calling it The Coffin, they might give it a more sensible name after all.

The drum at Buckland Abbey, before its departure to ‘The Box’

Anyway, regardless of what it’s called, that’s where Buckland’s Drake’s Drum will be housed from now on. So how can the house itself adapt? Moreover, how can it tell the story of both Sir Francis Drake and the estate itself? We spent a very enjoyable day discussing these issues, as well as exploring this astonishingly complex building. (By coincidence, Buckland was one of the two buildings on which I principally modelled Matthew Quinton’s ancestral home, Ravensden Abbey, in my series ‘the journals of Matthew Quinton’.) Clearly, aspects of Drake’s career are troubling to modern sensibilities, notably his involvement in slavery and his religious bigotry, so the old ‘hero narrative’ alone won’t serve any more; I’m actually wrestling with all of this myself at the moment, as Drake is quite a central character in the book I’m currently writing, the second in my new Tudor naval trilogy, and he’s not an easy man to portray. There’s also been an overwhelming focus on him and him alone, thus neglecting other family members, several of whom also had fascinating histories (and were invariably also named Francis Drake), not to mention the history of the abbey, its monks and its surrounding estate. Above all, there’s been an almost completion omission of the stories of the women associated with the house, including Drake’s two wives, the second of whom must have effectively run the estate for very long periods while her husband was at sea.

Of course, this isn’t a story unique to Buckland. Many ‘stately homes’ and other institutions are coming to terms with questions of how they can present what might sometimes be quite problematic pasts, and how they can broaden the stories they tell. Indeed, the ‘Making Maritime Memories’ project has addressed an important aspect of this; many National Trust properties, for example, have strong maritime elements within their histories, but these have sometimes not been emphasised, perhaps because their staff and volunteers lack the necessary information, perhaps because someone, at some time, decided that the story presented about a particular property should concentrate on aspects A and B, and neglect or ignore aspects C, D and E. But common sense and our own experience tells us that life isn’t like that. All buildings, all institutions, and indeed all individuals, have multiple narratives, as Rabbie Burns reminds us – ‘to see ourselves as others see us’ simply means that while we might want to tell one story about ourselves, others will be telling very different ones. So I wish the staff and volunteers at Buckland well as they develop their new, drum-less narratives; and while, yes, I’ll definitely go and have a look around Plymouth’s new Box when it opens, I, for one, am never going to grace it with that name!

The B-Word

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England breaks away from a great pan-European union, criticising it for being out of touch and corrupt. The break causes division across the land, with the north set against the south, London against the rest. Families, too, are divided, leading to bitter arguments between parents, children and siblings. Friends fall out with each other, and become bitter enemies. But the ruler is intent on making the break happen, regardless of opposition. Many look forward to a future where England stands alone, recreating past glories, carving its own way across the world. Others, though, long to remain in union with their continental cousins, as part of a broader international community. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage –

What?

No, wrong B-word.

I’m talking, of course, about Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic church, one of the important contexts underpinning my new novel, Destiny’s Tide. This is actually one of many aspects of the story (and, indeed, the bigger stories running across all three books in the trilogy) where I’m deliberately flying in the face of widely-held popular beliefs – or, as I prefer to call them, misconceptions and downright myths. For example, it’s often assumed that Henry VIII broke away from papal supremacy and the Catholic church in 1534, and that England then immediately became a Protestant country. Forgive the detour into panto season, but ‘oh no it didn’t’. Henry himself remained a religious conservative all his life, and once burned both Catholics and Protestants on the same day. True, there was an ongoing struggle in the last years of his reign between conservatives, led by the likes of the Duke of Norfolk and Bishop Stephen Gardiner, and reformers, led by the likes of Archbishop Cranmer and Henry’s last queen, Catherine Parr. (Thomas Cromwell, of Wolf Hall fame, was dead long before the main action in Destiny’s Tide begins.) But in many key respects, England remained a Catholic country until after Henry’s death, albeit with the king as head of the church instead of the pope.

All of these themes are referenced in my story. Above all, I try to imagine how one family, the Stannards of Dunwich, might have reacted to the sometimes bewildering pace and nature of religious change. For example, while services continued to be held in Latin, many aspects of belief were under threat from those who wanted England to become a truly Protestant country. The Catholic concept of Purgatory, a kind of staging post between earthly life and heaven or hell, was being challenged, while familiar, much-loved elements contained within every church were being torn down and destroyed. At the time when Destiny’s Tide is set, the principal battle was over rood screens, brightly decorated wooden structures which physically separated the clergy from their congregation, and the doom paintings which adorned them; indeed, one particular doom painting plays a significant part in the story. Now, I know that these are unfamiliar terms to many people, especially if you’re not one of those strange creatures who likes to spend even bright sunny afternoons wandering around old churches (guilty as charged) or if you live in a country which simply doesn’t have old churches.

(Sorry, good people of the United States, but this is one of those occasions when your definition of ‘old’ parts company with we Brits’ definition of ‘old’. Example: the church in my village predates Columbus, and the pub next door to it predates Jamestown. Both are still in regular use, not museums.)

So here, then, are some pictures to help give an idea of what the Stannards might have seen in their church in Dunwich, and the controversial features that they might have wanted to preserve.

Pre-Reformation churches in England would have been a riot of colour, with often elaborate wall paintings. These were eventually whitewashed over or obliterated completely, but many churches still reveal ghostly images of what once was. Here, an example from Chalgrave, Bedfordshire.
Another image from Chalgrave
There’d have been stunning stained glass, too, telling another set of stories. Here’s a detail from the astonishing medieval Jesse window at Llanrhaeadr church, Denbighshire
A rood screen – and, moreover, a very rare example of one which still has the rood loft in position: Derwen, Denbighshire. This would have contained the rood, usually a statue of Christ crucified, flanked by the Virgin Mary and Saint John. In Destiny’s Tide, this is where my fictional ‘Doom of Dunwich’ hangs
Rood screens, too, were often a riot of colour, being adorned with paintings of the apostles: Bramfield, Suffolk
Finally, a splendid example of a doom painting – and it’s also very close to Dunwich, namely in Wenhaston church, Suffolk. Personally, though, I think it deserves a little more respect than having the bookstall and a pile of chairs heaped up against it!

England’s Atlantis

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My new novel, Destiny’s Tide, is being published by Canelo in e-book form on 26 June, and is currently available for pre-order. (It’s currently ‘headlining’ their website as Book of the Month!) To build up to the book’s release, I’m going to highlight several aspects of the ‘back story’, and today I’m focusing on Dunwich in Suffolk, home of my protagonists, the Stannard family, and the setting for much of the land-based action in the book. First of all, here’s an edited version of what I say about it in the book’s historical note, with links added to various useful websites that provide more detail. For those who want yet more detail, and a better impression of the location than I can provide through a few photographs, there’s a Time Team programme about Dunwich, which is available to view on YouTube.

The story of Dunwich, ‘England’s Atlantis’, is not really as well-known as it should be. Indeed, it’s possible that some will know the name only from H P Lovecraft’s famous and seminal tale of the supernatural, The Dunwich Horror; this took only the placename from the village in Suffolk (and that probably unwittingly), otherwise setting the story in rural Massachusetts, but it has spawned two films and countless references in popular culture. As for the real Dunwich, almost certainly once the seat of the Bishops of East Anglia, as late as the thirteenth century it possessed the same geographical extent as London, was listed as one of the ten most important towns in England, and was regarded as the best harbour on the east coast. But a series of catastrophic storms, notably in 1286, 1287, 1328, 1347 and 1362, effectively blocked its harbour and swept away large areas of the town, which eventually declined to merely the tiny hamlet that remains today. The story of this ‘lost city’, and its endless battle against the sea, was well told in Rowland Parker’s famous book Men of Dunwich, first published in 1978, which was an important source for this story; so, too, were Nicholas Comfort’s The Lost City of Dunwich, Thomas Gardner’s An Historical Account of Dunwich (first published in 1754), and many archaeological reports on the digs and surveys, including those underwater, carried out at Dunwich over many years. Thanks to these sources, many of the character names in this story are taken from real people who lived there at the right time. Indeed, some of them held the actual offices I have attributed to them…

Dunwich in 1587, just over 40 years after the events of Destiny’s Tide. West is at the ‘top’. For a guide to the layout of the town and its major buildings, follow this link.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the town of Dunwich experienced something of a limited revival, thanks to the success of its Iceland fishery. However, this proved short-lived…the dissolution of the monasteries dramatically reduced the demand for fish, and the town’s decline resumed. Greyfriars, the monastery to which Thomas Ryman [one of the book’s central characters] once belonged, is now the last substantial relic of old Dunwich, with its gates, refectory and enclosing wall still standing upon Dunwich cliff…However, some remains of the Maison Dieu hospital supposedly still exist beneath the beach café and adjacent public conveniences…while the sunken lane that was once Midgate Street can still be walked as far as its abrupt end at the cliff edge. All Saints, the last of what were once seven churches, lost its final rector in 1755, although burials continued in its churchyard for some time afterwards. The last grave of all, that of Jacob Forster (who died in 1796, aged thirty-eight) is still in situ…although it is now precariously close to the cliff edge. The ruins of All Saints fell into the sea between 1904 and 1922; the last buttress was moved further inland and re-erected in the churchyard of the nineteenth century Saint James’s Church…

With climate change very much in the news, and coastal erosion still being very much a live issue on the East Anglian coast – indeed, it has just been proposed that entire communities might have to be abandoned to the sea – the fate of Dunwich provides an important lesson for our times. In terms of my story, though, it could hardly have provided a better backdrop. The town’s constant battle against the sea, together with its bitter rivalry with its neighbours Southwold and Walberswick, provided me with plenty of dramatic material, not to mention a hint of the supernatural… In recent times, the ruins of the seven lost churches of Dunwich have actually been located on the seabed and studied in some detail. But science has not yet been able to prove or disprove the legend that sometimes, if the conditions are right, the bells of the drowned churches can still be heard, ringing out to summon their ghostly congregations once again.

This splendid display board at Dunwich beach provides a vivid image of the destruction of the town. The ancient defensive fortification surrounding it was known as the Palesdyke.
The ruins of Dunwich Greyfriars
Dunwich cliff, looking south
The last grave of All Saints Church. A decisive meeting between the book’s two central characters takes place roughly in this location.

Blowing of Own Trumpet

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I hope you’ll forgive a little triumphalism this week, but last Thursday, I received the Anderson medal for the best maritime history book of 2017 from Admiral Sir Kenneth Eaton, chairman of the awarding body, the Society for Nautical Research. Although I’d known about the award for some months, and blogged about it in some detail here, it was still a proud and exciting moment. A nervous one, too, as I also had to deliver a lecture on the subject of the book, but fortunately, the large audience was gentle with me, partly because a good number of friends and family had turned up to support me!

Mind you, one audience member left half way through, grumbling audibly, and then spent much of the drinks reception kicking me…perhaps I should point out, though, that Felix is three months old.

Receiving the Anderson Medal from Admiral Sir Ken Eaton
(photo – Nigel Blanchford)

Anyway, normal blogging will be resumed next week, when I’ll be publishing the first in a series of blogs linked to my new book, Destiny’s Tide, in the buildup to its publication on 26 June. What links Atlantis, H P Lovecraft and Notre Dame cathedral? Find out next time!

Relaunched!

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Well, I’ve finally done it – the newly revamped version of my website is now live! If you’ve seen this post via email or social media, please go over to jddavies.com and take a look. There’s a fair bit of new content, including on the ‘News’ page. Above all, the new version should be a lot easier to navigate, and, from my point of view, easier to keep up to date. It’s also much easier for me to highlight individual books, so the homepage currently has Destiny’s Tide, the first in my new Tudor trilogy, my award-winning non-fiction book Kings of the Sea, plus Gentleman Captain, the first in the ‘journals of Matthew Quinton’. I’ll vary these ‘featured books’ from time to time. Scroll further down, and you’ll find my most recent blog posts, including this one. The very bottom of the homepage now features improved social media links, a search facility, plus a new archive search, which allows you to search the blog by month. Please send me feedback about the new look, and suggestions for new content!

In other news, I had a great time earlier in the week at the Canelo author party (i.e. my digital fiction publisher). It was great to chat to some of the staff and connect faces to the names on incoming emails, but at these sorts of events, it’s always especially nice to have a chat with fellow scribblers. So I had lengthy chinwags with Simon Turney and A J Mackenzie – the latter actually being two people, the husband and wife team of Marilyn Livingstone and Morgen Witzel. My chat with them was particularly enjoyable because I’d recently been reading their ‘Hardcastle and Mrs Chaytor’ series, excellent, atmospheric historical mysteries set on Romney Marsh in the 1790s. I like the strong, interesting central characters and vivid sense of place that characterises these books, so I hope there’ll be more to come. It’s also not often that one can have an informed discussion in a bar about Admiral Duncan’s victory at the battle of Camperdown in 1797!

Anyway, the party’s over in more senses than one, and it’s time once more to get down to hard work on the next book in the ‘Jack Stannard’ Tudor naval trilogy!

Time to Relaunch!

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Over the next few days, I’m going to be working on a refurbishment of this site, updating lots of the pages and information, freshening up the design, and doing whatever else strikes me as a good idea at the time. This is partly because this sort of ‘spring clean’ is long overdue, partly to reflect the publication in a few weeks’ time of Destiny’s Tide, the first book in my new Tudor naval trilogy. As a result, it’s possible that the site will be down for short periods, or will lack access to some of the usual material for others, but I’m going to try and get everything done as quickly as possible.

As part of the process, though, it would be good to know of any ideas you have for improving the site. While free books aren’t an option (!), and I’m already on the case with things like being able to buy my books more directly via this platform, I’ve also been toying with a number of features that I know quite a lot of other authors already employ, such as a monthly newsletter and occasional competitions. But are there any other things you’d like to see, either as permanent features of the site or as topics for future blogposts? Please use the ‘comment’ facility on this page or the ‘contact’ facility elsewhere on the site!