J D Davies - Historian and Author

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

Naval historical fiction

Bored Now: or, Captain Blood Plays Another Game of Solitaire

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Maritime history has provided me with many satisfying and pleasurable moments since I started studying it seriously *cough* years ago, but there’s something a bit special about chairing a conference session where [a] all the speakers are running pretty perfectly to time [b] the subject matter is interesting [c] if the chair’s attention does momentarily wander (heaven forfend), he can look out of the patio doors behind the audience and see the port side of Brunel’s SS Great Britain, just a few feet away. While that was a minor personal highlight of last weekend’s Connecting the Oceans conference in Bristol, examining the impact of global steam on the maritime world in the nineteenth century, it was far from being the only one. It would be invidious for me to comment on the quality of the organisation, as I was one of the co-organisers, but everything seemed to run smoothly, nobody got lost, and the ‘buzz’ from the audience was generally very positive indeed. So all in all, it seemed to be a success, and the conference proceedings are likely to be published before the end of this year in the Society for Nautical Research’s online open access newsletter, Topmasts.

One can never tell from a bare conference programme whether a common theme is going to emerge, or whether speakers are going to go off in all sorts of weird and wonderful directions. From the off, though, it was clear that this conference was going to present a pretty united front. Admiral Sir Ken Eaton, chairman of the co-sponsors the Society for Nautical Research, and Dr Helen Doe of Exeter University, provided broad overviews, with Helen concentrating on the businesses behind the rise of steam. We had two further keynote papers, from Dr Graeme Milne of Liverpool University and Captain Peter King, both looking at different aspects of the impact of steam (particular kudos to Peter for making the triple expansion compound engine interesting!) The panel sessions were varied and lively. James Boyd of the SS Great Britain Trust looked at steam’s aspect on migration, Jonathan Stafford of Nottingham University looked at boredom during long sea voyages (of which more anon) and Tim Carter of the Norwegian Centre for Maritime and Diving Medicine considered the different health hazards on steamships compared with sail. The next panel saw Morten Tinning of the Danish Maritime Museum look at the rise of the rise of the mighty Maersk line from humble beginnings (and opposition from those who thought steam had reached its technological limit), Tim Beattie looked at the impact of steam on the port of Falmouth, and Joanna Mathers of the SSGB Trust presented her preliminary findings about the nature of the labour force on UK steamships. In the primarily naval panel, which I chaired, Benjamin Miertzschke of the University of Potsdam looked at the introduction of steam in the German merchant marine and navy (significantly later than in the UK), Zachary Kopin of the University of Michigan looked at how the transition from sail to steam affected African-Americans (badly, with many of the opportunities previously open to them in the sailing navy being closed off), and Alistair Roach of the SNR and SS Great Britain Trust discussed Brunel’s extraordinary designs for Crimean War ‘stealth gunboats’, some even intended for water jet propulsion, not dissimilar in appearance to modern littoral combat ships or even low-profile drug-smuggling craft.

From my point of view, though, the most surprising theme to emerge from the conference was the serious thought now being given to the subject of boredom at sea, which came up in a couple of papers and was the principal subject of Jonathan Stafford’s. The long steamship passages out to India or Australia could become monotonous, and passengers’ letters and diaries give a good impression of this. (I’ve actually studied some of these myself – Sir Arthur Stepney, a member of the family I’ve been working on for many years, travelled extensively by sea from the 1870s to the 1900s, and his papers would be an excellent source for researching this theme.) By coincidence, not long after I got back from the conference, an email turned up with details of a talk in London on the exact same topic. Clearly boredom at sea is now ‘a thing’, but I think this sort of analysis could be extended well beyond the transition to steam in the nineteenth century; I’ve read countless ships’ logs and descriptions of sea voyages in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and let’s be brutally honest, not a lot happened for much of the time. This can pose a bit of a problem when I don my other hat as a writer of nautical fiction, which, by definition, demands constant excitement to keep the reader hooked. To his credit, the ‘daddy’ of our genre, Patrick O’Brian, is pretty good at conveying the tedium of long voyages at sea, but I sometimes wonder whether he would have found a publisher in the present day and age – I know quite a few people who’ve given up on O’Brian chiefly because little seems to happen for chapters at a time. On the other hand, to constantly emphasise the exciting aspects of life at sea, whether it be in fiction or in writing ‘real’ maritime history, is arguably to present the reader with a distorted and unrealistic experience of what it was actually like. That being so, I can exclusively reveal that my next novel will be entitled Matthew Quinton Watches Paint Dry.

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Finally, a plug for another conference! The New Researchers in Maritime History conference is always one of the highlights of the calendar, providing a chance for those just starting out in the field to try out their ideas and to meet both others in the same position and ‘old lags’, including some of the most eminent figures in the field. Next year’s conference will be held in the splendid setting of Chatham Dockyard, and the call for papers is below (NB the website given hasn’t caught up yet, so the online form isn’t yet available). Although I haven’t been a ‘new researcher’ for at least *coughs again* years, I’ll be there!

 

New researchers 2020

 

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.

Tidal Wave

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At long last, I’m thrilled to be able to confirm that the first book in my new Tudor naval fiction trilogy will be published by Canelo this summer, currently as an e-book only.

And the title is…

Cue drumroll!

Cue trumpets!!

Cue my hometown male voice choir singing the Welsh national anthem!!!

DESTINY’S TIDE

Followers of this blog will know that this book has had a long and pretty unusual gestation period. Whereas authors invariably have to edit their work down to an acceptable length (unless you’re George R R Martin, obviously), I found myself having to more than double the length of a story that had originally been conceived as a novella. This proved to be quite fraught, and took rather longer than anticipated (with a knock-on effect on other projects), but it’s finally ready to go. And here, for the first time in any medium, is a preview of the book…

England, 1544

It is a dangerous time.

The religious changes enforced by the capricious old king, Henry VIII, have created fear, uncertainty and suspicion, while the king’s pride has led the country into simultaneous wars against France and Scotland. Against this backdrop, Jack Stannard, a young shipmaster, grieves for his dead wife, while hoping that the wars will provide an opportunity to distinguish himself, to provide for his motherless children Meg and Tom, and to restore the fortunes of his hometown of Dunwich. For centuries, though, the sea has eaten away at ‘England’s Atlantis’, while its rising neighbour, Southwold, plots incessantly to supplant it. Jack also has to battle the demons personified by his own father, a man with a dark and violent history, albeit now brought low by a terrible illness.

The beach and cliff at Dunwich, Suffolk. The coast was once more than a mile further out to sea; the remains of the town and its seven churches still lie underwater

As he sails to fight the Scots, Jack is accompanied by his mentor, Thomas Ryman, erstwhile soldier and equally erstwhile friar. Together, they fight ferocious battles in Scottish waters, while also contending with insidious enemies within their own ranks. Meanwhile in London, Jack’s old schoolfriend, Will Halliday, and his master, William Gonson, the effective organiser of the king’s navy, struggle to fit out a fleet for an even greater war against France, even as Gonson is consumed by memories of the terrible, unjust fate that befell his son. Jack and Will once harboured ambitions of singing before the king as members of his elite Chapel Royal, but destiny has now set them upon very different courses, with their futures, loves, and very lives, depending on the success of King Henry’s wars.  

The surviving remains of the Greyfriars at Dunwich – Thomas Ryman’s home until the abrupt and shocking Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII

Fresh from the campaign in Scotland, Jack Stannard sails for France and the great siege of Boulogne. There, he encounters an exotic foreigner whose words have a profound influence on him, challenging his entire view of the world and of his own future. Meanwhile, in Dunwich, Jack’s precocious nine-year-old daughter Meg has dreams and ambitions of her own, dreams and ambitions that have no place for the potential new wife who seems to be being foisted on her father. But Meg’s aspirations, and indeed her very life, are soon threatened by the sea’s relentless assault upon the ancient port.

The story culminates in the dramatic events of 1545, when the French launch a colossal invasion fleet against England. Sailing into battle against it, Jack and Ryman are hamstrung by treachery from closer to home than they could ever have expected. Events move inexorably to a shattering climax aboard the pride of Henry VIII’s navy – the great ship Mary Rose…

The hull of the Mary Rose, raised from the seabed in 1982, now preserved in a superb museum in Portsmouth

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Destiny’s Tide is based closely on the historical record, and upon the true stories of both ‘the lost city’ of Dunwich and the Gonson family. Although the Stannard family is fictitious, the England in which the three generations of it at the centre of the trilogy live and strive is recreated as faithfully as possible – a land torn apart by bitter religious divisions, even as the kingdom takes a dramatic new direction, a ‘turn to the sea’ in which gallant, ambitious merchants, mariners and warriors start to cast their eyes and set their sails far beyond the realm’s traditional boundaries and ambitions. Together, over a period of forty years, the Stannards and the Gonsons will be at the very heart of the astonishing rise of England’s Navy Royal.

The second book, set nearly a quarter of a century after the events of Destiny’s Tide , will take the Stannards to the Caribbean in company with John Hawkins and his young protege, a certain Francis Drake, while the final instalment, another twenty years further on, will centre on the titanic fight for England’s very survival as the ‘invincible’ Spanish Armada approaches its shores…

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I’ve already started work on the second book, which Canelo hope to publish as soon as possible after the first. But I certainly hope to get back to writing further titles in the Quinton series as soon as possible!

In the meantime, I’m trying to work out how I managed to commit myself to giving five talks in the first fortnight of February (I suspect the words ‘yes, I’ll do it’ might be part of the answer). Most of these are to selected audiences, but on 7 February, I’ll be talking at an open event in the wonderfully historic St Nicholas church in Deptford (full details here). This is under the auspices of the Lenox Project, which aims to build a replica of a particularly important Restoration warship, and I’ll be speaking alongside my old friend Richard Endsor, author of the definitive book about the ship. It should be a fun night, with music (not provided by us, have no fear) and refreshments, so if you’re in the general vicinity, please come along – it’s free!

The Agonising

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As far as I’m aware, there’s no collective noun for a gathering of historical novelists; but if there was, it would probably be ‘an agonising’.

This was demonstrated in spades last week, at the 2018 conference of the Historical Novel Society. What do historical novelists agonise about? Pretty much everything, really…but more of that anon. First, the venue. This was something of an oddity: recent UK conferences have been held in such obvious locations as London and Oxford, but this one was held in a vast, modern golf hotel on the outskirts of that renowned historical destination…umm, Cumbernauld. (And when I say vast, I mean vast. My room was literally the furthest one from reception; as a result, I’ve now qualified for the British 20K walking team at the 2020 Olympics.) I guess that for obvious reasons, venues in Edinburgh would have been far too expensive, not to mention booked up long ago, but it seems slightly odd that the society didn’t find anywhere in Glasgow, which has history galore…on the other hand, the hotel in question had the not inconsiderable claim to fame of having the Antonine Wall literally next door. Even so, the relatively few golfers who had the misfortune to be staying there at the same time must have wondered what on earth had hit them, as they and historical novelists are hardly a natural combination (although, perhaps, a perfect one as the basis for a murder mystery: ‘aha, Inspector Rebusmorse Clouseau, you mean zis writer of late Roman fiction has been killed by un golfer with ze handicap of less than eight?’).

So back to my original premise, namely that when a large crowd of historical novelists get together, they agonise. And these, in no particular order, are some of the things that they agonise about, one or more of which formed the basis of many conversations held in the bar, at the breakfast or dinner tables, and in the Q&A sessions.

  • WIPs. The few stray golfers were probably confused and alarmed by what they might have taken to be endless references to whips, and perhaps wondered whether they’d stumbled into a convention of sado-masochists. To a novelist, however, the WIP is the current Work In Progress, and hardly any conversation at the conference that I was involved in or overheard didn’t have, at some point, the obligatory outpouring of angst about the state of one’s WIP. (Too long! Too short! Too boring! Too many plotlines! Too few plotlines! Too many characters! Too few characters! Too much dialogue! Too little dialogue!…and so on ad infinitum)
  • Agents. The getting of same (by those without); grumbles about same (by those with).
  • Publishers. Ditto.
  • Self-publishing. Should I? Shouldn’t I?
  • Research. How much is too much? Conversely, is a vague recollection of a 1968 article in Look and Learn an adequate amount of research?
  • Authenticity and accuracy. Should I inflict on myself dysentery, plague, and stab wounds from a rusty sword, to get the full authentic ‘feel’ of the Middle Ages? (Note: the correct answer is ‘no’.)

And so on. However, historical novelists don’t just agonise; they also bitch. And oh boy, when they bitch, they bitch for England, Wales, Scotland, the USA, or whatever their country of origin might be. These bitching sessions become more and more bitter as the evening wears on, but they always tend to follow a similar pattern: ‘so-and-so might have sold shedloads of books, but s/he can’t construct a grammatically correct sentence to save his or her life’, or ‘I mean, just how inaccurate is his (or her) description of the Defenestration of Prague?’, or ‘my copy editor is an absolute ****’.

Anyway, from the tone of this blog thus far, you may be wondering why on earth I go to such events. The answer, of course, is a very simple one – what the Irish would call the craic. Writing is, by definition, a pretty solitary occupation, so the very rare opportunities to get together with one’s fellow practitioners are usually to be jumped at. The HNS conference always means meeting up with old chums one hasn’t seen since the last one, and is particularly special because a substantial American contingent always comes over for it (the conference takes place in the States in odd numbered years, although I haven’t yet managed to get across the pond for one of those). There’s also an opportunity to meet fellow authors one hasn’t encountered before, and I was particularly pleased to meet K M Ashman, a fellow countryman (and fellow rugby fan!) who’s followed terrific success via self-publishing by getting snapped up by ‘mainstream’ publishers. I can’t wait to get started on Kevin’s medieval Welsh history series!

You might be wondering by now what actually happened at the conference, apart from the agonising, and the bitching, and the socialising. Well, those were far and away the most important ingredients (and in that, of course, there are considerable similarities with academic conferences, which I’ve blogged about before). But there were also such delights as playing Bestselling Author Bingo (‘Alison Weir!’ ‘Ben Kane!’ ‘J D Davies!’ – OK, yes, I made that up), the Random Re-enactors, and, above all, the conference gala dinner – which, as this was in Scotland, culminated in a ceilidh. However, as most of the participants were non-Scots and, generally speaking, not people who need worry about being challenged over their age in an off-licence, the results were pretty calamitous. (Solution: adjourn to bar, resume bitching.) This time, though, and sadly, some time-honoured traditions of the HNS conference went by the wayside, for reasons unknown to your humble blogger – no more late night readings of sex scenes after the gala dinner (I kid you not), no historical costume parade, and, sadly, no Robin Ellis, aka the original Poldark, who was meant to be the star turn but who’d had to have an operation instead (he’s fine, which is excellent news).

Oh yes, I almost forgot, there were serious sessions with talks! From experience, I know that few things are more boring than reciting all the talks one’s attended at a conference, so I’ll just mention my personal favourite – which none of you will be surprised to hear was the one on the do’s and don’ts of nautical fiction. The panel consisted of three colleagues whom I’ve got to know well in recent years, especially as a result of the Weymouth Leviathan festival in 2016 (sadly a one-off, with plans to make it annual or biennial having fallen by the wayside): Linda Collison, all the way from Denver, Colorado, who’s had a varied career, including fitting in lots of sea time, and who writes nautical fiction with, unusually, a female central character; Alaric Bond, all the way from, umm, Sussex, who’s just brought out his thirteenth book in a very different kind of Napoleonic Wars naval series (rather than having one central character who rises to glory through the series, a la C S Forester, Patrick O’Brian and Julian Stockwin, he makes the entire crew his ‘hero’); and Antoine Vanner, who writes the excellent ‘Dawlish Chronicles’ series of Victorian naval fiction. Antoine is a great guy with a wealth of life experience, having lived or worked in getting on for two dozen countries, but there’s a part of me that would like to stick pins in a voodoo doll of him…in addition to bringing out full length books about once a year, he blogs on little known but fascinating aspects of naval history twice a week (and pretty much without fail), sends out a monthly newsletter to his fans, and writes additional short stories with the same central characters just for the people on his mailing list! As well as putting my own workrate to shame, he’s also a terrific public speaker, and as Linda and Alaric are no slouches in that regard either, the panel really fizzed, with lots of questions from a really engaged audience. I’d been primed to put my hand up if nobody else did, but in the end, I wasn’t needed. The questions, and indeed the talks themselves, focused on themes that have appeared many times in this blog, such as the level of technical nautical language to deploy, the pleasures and perils of research, and getting the balance right between action set at sea and on land.

So all in all, it was a terrific event, and well worth the long haul to Cumbernauld!

Anyway, if it’s Sunday, it must be Scotland – and if it’s next Friday, it must be France, for reasons I’ll blog about in due course.

 

Serendipity

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Sometimes – very, very rarely, but sometimes – thinks click together in an unexpected but beautiful, seemingly preordained way. This is the moment called ‘serendipity’, and it’s doubly appropriate in this case, as that was part of the official pedigree name of my first dog.

(‘Peredur Serendipity’, since you ask – a distinctly wilful dachsund whom I christened Perry. And no, Russian hackers, none of those words are in any of my passwords, and I don’t use the ‘name of first pet’ option in security questions. So sucks to you, Vladimir.)

As mentioned previously in this blog, I’m currently in the distinctly unusual situation for an author of having to double the length of a book, rather than going through the usual purgatory of trying to edit something by culling vast amounts of purple prose. This is the first of my planned Tudor naval trilogy, originally intended to be novellas, now growing exponentially into full-length novels to be published by Canelo. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to expand a story so much, and it’s a steep learning curve. Simply tinkering with the existing text isn’t enough; you don’t get from 40,000 words to at least 80,000 by adding more adjectives, and although the extra space for character development is very welcome, an extra 40,000 words (or more) is one heck of a lot of character development…

So I knew I’d need to add some extra chapters, including additional events, new characters, and even an entire sub-plot, something you don’t really have the space to include in a novella. I had the additional events sorted in short order: when you’re talking about the reign of Henry VIII, after all, one thing that no historian or novelist lacks is juicy material. But the new characters and the sub-plot were proving a little trickier. Then I decided that one passage in what I’d already written would permit a flashback scene, in which my central character encounters the holder of a particular office. Now I needed the name of that office holder at that particular time, so went to the dreaded-but-indispensable Wikipedia, and found that the holder of said office was somebody who, to avoid spoilers, I’ll call Han Solo.

(Do you have any idea of how difficult it is to write a blog like this without spoilers?)

Of course, I’d come across the name of Han Solo before (* avoid gratuitous Millennium Falcon joke *), but realised it would be a good idea to know a bit more about him, e.g. to see if there were any portraits of him that I could use as the basis for a physical description. This meant going to the good old Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. No picture, alas, but some interesting detail about his life…and as I read on, it became very, very interesting detail indeed…and then the timing and circumstances of his death couldn’t have been more perfect for my narrative. All I needed now was a supplementary character to provide the link between the hero and Han Solo (* avoid gratuitous Princess Leia joke *), and hey presto, the sub-plot came into being. Hopefully, by the time the finished article is complete, nobody will be able to see the joins! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is very much what you call serendipity.

Seriously, though, it demonstrates a point that’s absolutely critical, in my opinion, for all writers of history, be it fiction or non-fiction, at any level whatsoever. Never be content with a narrow focus on just your specific area; I know plenty of people who’ve spent so long burrowing deep into the research materials for their particular niche that they’ve completely missed huge aspects of the bigger picture. Context is all, and it’s vital to know what else was going on at the same time – e.g. when I was doing my doctorate in naval history, I realised pretty quickly that to do it properly, I needed to be across the latest research in political, economic, religious and social history, and so on and so forth. Even for a novel, looking at such a broad picture is vital. Personally, something I often find useful on the still-dreaded-but-indispensable Wikipedia is its provision of entries for individual years. Type in any date of your choice and take a look at what was going on; the list of deaths often throws up some useful little connections. And let’s all count ourselves fortunate – nay, serendipitous – that we no longer have to research such things by making a special trip to the local library to spend hours ploughing through the Encyclopedia Britannica. 

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A couple of quick announcements to end with. For those within range, I’ll be talking at Hitchin Library, Hertfordshire, at 11am on Saturday 9 June, my title being ‘The Pleasures and Perils of Writing Nautical Fiction’ (more detail on the library’s Facebook page and Twitter account). Finally, regular readers of this blog will recall that, three years ago or thereabouts, I devoted rather a lot of posts to the calamitous situation at the Carmarthenshire Archives Service, where mould was discovered in the strongrooms, leading to the indefinite closure of the record office and the despatch of the entire collection for cleaning, rendering it inaccessible. This was a huge blow to me, as it denied me access to the principal materials I needed to complete my book on the Stepney family. However, and to be scrupulously fair to all concerned, it’s only right for me to point out that the entire sorry saga is now pretty close to a happy ending. All of the documents are now available again, albeit in Cardiff – or at least, when I sent Glamorgan Archives a list of particularly vital Stepney manuscripts, they were able to confirm that they were all there and all open. Better still, this week work starts on the brand new archive facility in Carmarthen, and having seen the plans, I can only think that maybe, despite all the grief it caused me and all the expense it’s caused the Council Tax payers of Carmarthenshire, this saga has proved to be a blessing in disguise.

Finally, there’ll be no post next week due to the Bank Holiday and general stuff (a little-known Swedish commander of the Thirty Years War).

Merry Christmas from the Restoration Navy!

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A festive re-post from the very first Christmas of this blog, namely 2012…

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Henry Teonge, a Warwickshire clergyman, was fifty-five when he first went to sea as a naval chaplain, presumably forced into the job by the extent of his debts. In 1675 he joined the Fourth Rate Assistance, commanded by William Houlding, which was despatched to the Mediterranean as part of Sir John Narbrough’s fleet, operating against the corsairs of Tripoli. Teonge kept a lively diary of his time aboard the ship, and during his subsequent service on the Bristol and Royal Oak. This is one of the best contemporary sources for the nature of shipboard life in the Restoration navy, and I’ve used it often during my research for the Quinton books. For example, several of the ‘menus’ for officers’ meals in Gentleman Captain were taken straight from Teonge, while my description of Matthew Quinton’s Christmas at sea aboard the Seraph in The Mountain of Gold was based closely on the following passage in the diary – his account of Christmas 1675 aboard the Assistance, near Crete.

24 Very rough today. No land yet. Our decks are washed for Christmas.

25 Christmas Day we keep thus. At 4 in the morning our trumpeters all do flat their trumpets and begin at our Captain’s cabin, and thence to all the officers and gentlemen’s cabins; playing a levite at each cabin door, and bidding good morrow, wishing a Merry Christmas. After they go to their station, viz. on the poop, and sound three levites in honour of the morning. At 10 we go to prayers and sermon ; text, Zacc. ix. 9. Our Captain had all his officers and gentlemen to dinner with him, where we had excellent good fare: a rib of beef, plum puddings, mince pies, &c. and plenty of good wines of several sorts ; drank healths to the King, to our wives and friends; and ended the day with much civil mirth.

Zacchariah Chapter 9, Verse 9 reads (in the King James version that Teonge would have used) ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.’ (The first part of the verse was later used for a famous soprano solo in Handel’s Messiah.) Teonge records no specific New Year festivities, although he did write a poem as a special New Year’s present for Captain Houlding. William Houlding, a former East India Company captain, held several important commands in Charles II’s reign, including that of the London in the 1673 campaign, and died on 20 September 1682.

A NEW-YEAR’S GIFT TO OUR CAPTAIN.

ACROSTICON.

W — hen Phoebus did this morning first appear,

I — nriching with his beams our hemispheare,

L- eaving the darksome night behind him, and

L — onging to be at his meridian;

I — magine then the old-year’s out of date,

A — new one unto Jove let’s dedicate—

M— an should not be like an old almanack.

H – eavens guide you, sir, that Paul’s words may be true,

O — ld things are done away, all things are new;

U — nto the rich endowments of your mind,

L — ift up your noble courage: Fortune’s kind

D — irections bid you forwards; your Assistance

I — s beggd by Mars for th’ Trypolenes resistance-

N — ‘er man more fit bold acts to undertake,

G — od with his blessings make you fortunate.

On 6 January, Teonge recorded the hilarious festivities for Twelfth Night.

6 Very rough weather all the last night, and all this day.  We are now past Zante; had we been there this day, we had seen a great solemnity ; for this day being Twelfth Day, the Greek Bishop of Zante doth (as they call it) baptise the sea, with a great deal of ceremony; sprinkling their galleys and fishing-tackle with holy-water. But we had much mirth on board, for we had a great cake made, in which was put a bean for the king, a pea for the queen, a clove for the knave, a forked stick for the cuckold, a rag for the slut. The cake was cut into several pieces in the great cabin, and all put into a napkin, out of which every one took his piece, as out of a lottery. Then each piece is broken to see what was in it, which caused much laughter to see our lieutenant prove the cuckold, and more to see us tumble one over the other in the cabin, by reason of the rough weather. 

And with that glorious mental image of the chaplain and officers of the Assistance laughing uproariously and falling over each other (and, presumably, the great cake), I’ll wish you all the compliments of the season and a very Happy New Year!

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This blog will return in 2018 with more news of my new Tudor naval series, plus updates on the Quinton Journals. Thanks to all of you for your support – especially to those who have read one or more of my books this year! I really appreciate your support and feedback.