J D Davies - Historian and Author

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

Naval historical fiction

I’m a Doctor – Why Can’t I have a Tardis?

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What, you mean doctorates in History don’t count?

But a Tardis would have been very useful over the weekend, when I was in Portsmouth for the AGM of the Society for Nautical Research, followed by a splendid dinner on the lower gundeck of HMS Victory, but I’d also have loved to be in Chatham for ‘Medway in Flames’, the culmination of the commemorative events (on this side of the North Sea, at any rate) for the 350th anniversary of the Dutch attack on the Medway. Bilocation, or at least, being able to make quick temporal jumps back and forth between Portsmouth and Medway via a Tardis, would have been very useful indeed. Fortunately, though, thanks to the joys of the interweb, I’ve been able to catch up on the shenanigans in Kent via local news and the council’s live stream of the event. It looks very jolly, but would it have been preferable to quaffing Pimms on the quarterdeck of Victory? Now there’s a conundrum for a Time Lord to address.

The manic June continues, though, and on Thursday I’ll be hopping on the Eurostar, bound for Amsterdam, for the conference on the Dutch raid organised jointly by the UK’s Naval Dockyards Society and the Dutch Vrienden van de Witt. I’m looking forward to catching up with lots of Dutch friends, and to giving my paper on the political and ideological implications of the raid for the Stuart monarchy! I hope to be able to blog about the conference next Monday, but that might prove to be a bit optimistic given the schedule for the weekend, so there might be a delay of a day or two.

***

Meanwhile, multiple good news for all Quintonistas! The new title, The Devil Upon the Wave, will be published by Endeavour Press before the end of the month, initially as an e-book but also available in short order on print-on-demand. Apologies for the slight delay, as I’d hoped it would be out before the main Medway events, but I hope you’ll agree it’s worth the short wait – the main action is set against the backdrop of the Dutch attacks on the Medway, and then the subsequent assault on Landguard Fort at Felixstowe. As well as featuring most of the regular series characters, there are also ‘guest appearances’ from the likes of King Charles II, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, and, yes, Admiral Michiel de Ruyter.

Endeavour will also be bringing out the first Quinton omnibus – a special e-book edition of the first three titles in the series, Gentleman Captain, The Mountain of Gold and The Blast That Tears the Skies. So all your summer holiday reading requirements are sorted!

 

And So It Begins

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It’s a little known fact that ‘June’ is derived from a Latin word which means ‘don’t even think of trying to cram anything else into your diary’. That’s certainly the case for me this month, as I embark on the exciting round of events to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Dutch attack on the Medway! It all starts this Thursday, when I’ll be attending the launch event for the festivities in the Historic Dockyard at Chatham (Marine bands, stray Dutch prince, etc etc), followed by giving a talk at Gillingham library that evening. I’m gratified and slightly daunted to learn that this has been fully booked for some weeks, with a capacity audience of eighty expected – and, of course, this is one part of the country where some audience members may well know quite a lot about what I’m going to be talking about! Over the following days, I hope to get to as many of the events, exhibitions, and so forth, as I can, and if circumstances allow, I’ll try to both ‘live tweet’ and blog daily about what’s been going on. This, after all, is almost certainly going to be the most public exposure seventeenth century naval history is ever going to get during my lifetime, so I fully intend to make the most of it!

The following weekend will see a quick trip to Portsmouth for the AGM of the Society of Nautical Research, where I’ll be presenting the report of the Research and Programmes committee, with dinner aboard HMS Victory. (Memo to self: duck even lower this time.) Then, in the following week, it’s off to Amsterdam to speak at the first of the big ‘Dutch in the Medway’ conferences, which is being organised by the wonderful Naval Dockyards Society and the Vrienden van de Witt. There are still places available at this, and even if it’s immodest to say so, the programme looks terrific – full details and booking forms can be obtained here. I’ve also factored in some time to get to the Rijksmuseum and some of the city’s other attractions (aka ‘bookshops’), so again, I hope to tweet and blog about my doings over there. A few days at home, and then it’ll be back to Medway for the second conference in the space of a week. This one is taking place at the University of Kent’s Chatham campus, and thankfully, I’m not speaking at it, so I can relax in the back row and behave abominably (only joking, speakers).

And on top of all that…the Medway-related Quinton title, The Devil Upon the Wave, should be coming out from Endeavour Press very shortly (initially e-book only, but print-on-demand shortly thereafter), while I’ve literally just completed the very last pieces of work, ie. the index and approving the jacket design, on my next non-fiction book, Kings of the Sea: Charles II, James II and the Royal Navy, which is being published by Seaforth in August. So although I’m looking forward to the distinctly hectic June schedule, I’m also looking forward to July, which is derived from another old Latin word meaning ‘slump, exhausted, in a comfy armchair’.

At Last It Can Be Told!

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Cue fanfare from massed ranks of trumpeters, plus assorted Welsh male voice choirs…

I can finally reveal the really exciting news that I’ve had to keep under wraps for several months. My e-book publisher, the fantastic Endeavour Press, is launching a new traditional publishing imprint, Endeavour Ink…and I’m one of the authors on their launch list! You can find out more about this terrific new venture, and see what illustrious company I’m in, here and here.

First and foremost, huge thanks to Richard Foreman and the team at Endeavour for showing such faith in me – I certainly hope to be able to repay it. Along with my agent, Peter Buckman, we had quite a bit of discussion before Christmas last year about the nature and time period of the new set of stories I’d develop for Endeavour Ink, but in the end, we settled on something that we’re all very happy with. Personally, I can’t wait to get started on writing the first of the three linked stories that Endeavour Ink have commissioned from me (and have, indeed, already done a fair bit of research and planning for it). So without further ado…

The new stories will have a very new setting for me, namely the Tudor age. Having said that, this is, in many respects, very familiar turf indeed: in my ‘previous life’, I taught the Tudors to A-level students, and to much younger schoolpupils, for many years, so I think I’ve got a pretty strong grounding in the period. In terms of naval history, of course, it doesn’t get much more seminal, and the timeframe I’ve chosen for the three stories reflects that. The first story takes place in the mid-1540s, so it’s hardly a major spoiler to reveal that it might just include the sinking of a certain ship*…and similarly, the third story takes place in 1588, so no prizes for guessing which major historical event provides its primary focus.

No, not that one
* No, not that one

But the famous events serve a second purpose. They provide the backdrop to the story of one family, drawn from one particularly remarkable, haunting, and very real place, whose members serve at sea throughout the period. They live through the trauma of profound religious change, experience times of great political turbulence, are riven by the horrors of war, and fight an enemy more terrible and relentless than anything the French or Spanish can throw at them. They encounter some of the great historical figures of the period, from Henry VIII to Francis Drake. Above all, they play their parts in the rise of the English ‘navy royal’ under Henry and his daughter, ‘Gloriana’, Queen Elizabeth I. So it’ll be a big change from the Quinton Journals, both in terms of period and theme.

If all goes well, I’ll be writing the first of the new Tudor stories in the second half of the year. In the meantime, I’m finishing off the new Quinton title, The Devil upon the Wave, and will then be working on the new academic book on naval ideology, 1500-1815, that I’m co-editing with Alan James and Gijs Rommelse. So 2017 is shaping up to be a pretty busy, but hopefully very rewarding, year!

Merry Christmas from the Raging Quintons!

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For the final post on this site in 2016 – and wasn’t that just the most nondescript year ever? – I thought I’d provide a Christmas treat for all loyal readers of both this blog and my books. I mentioned recently that Endeavour Press will soon be publishing the long-delayed Quinton prequel, The Rage of Fortune, focusing on the adventures of Matthew’s eponymous grandfather, the eighth Earl of Ravensden, at the end of Elizabeth I’s reign. So I’m delighted to be able to publish the first ‘teaser trailer’, in the shape of an extract from the book!

Whenever I’ve done this before, I’ve always published the first chapter of a new title. But I can’t do that this time…not only is the first chapter of The Rage of Fortune decidedly ‘left field’ in terms of both style and content, it also contains a significant number of examples of the eighth Earl’s distinctly un-aristocratic language, which might not be entirely appropriate reading matter in Christmas week. As it is, the extract I’ve chosen has two ‘expletives deleted’, but I’ve censored those in order not to offend the sensibilities of any vicars or maiden aunts who might be looking over your shoulders as you read this.

The passage which follows is one of many in Rage that are based on real historical incidents – in this case, the astonishingly daring dash through the Straits of Dover in 1599 by a squadron of Spanish galleys commanded by Federico Spinola, brother of the much more famous Ambrogio. Justinus of Nassau, the ‘Bastard Orange’ as Earl Matthew calls him, is another real historical figure, an illegitimate son of William the Silent, Prince of Orange. Randal Gray, the historian of Spinola’s operations, opens his account of this event thus:

‘In these parts has happened that which hardly would have been believed, that six galleys known to be coming out of Spain and so long looked for should pass through the Narrow Seas and recover harbour without any hurt.’ So wrote Sir Robert Sydney, Governor of Flushing in the Netherlands, to Sir Robert Cecil, Queen Elizabeth l’s Secretary of State, on 13 September 1599. Eleven years after the ruin of the ‘Invincible Armada’, Spanish galleys commanded by 28-year-old Federico Spinola of Genoa had humiliated the combined navies of England and Holland. And Spinola was to pass the Straits of Dover not once but twice, in a manner comparable with the Channel dash of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in 1942.’

And so, having set the scene, I’ll hand over to our two narrators: first a mysterious Hungarian mercenary who calls himself Laszlo Horvath, then Matthew Quinton, Earl of Ravensden. Season’s greetings to one and all!

***

‘Six galleys,’ he cries. ‘Six [expletive deleted] Spanish galleys, and they’re running the Straits!’

It is my first sight of galleys. They are very different to the high-hulled English and Dutch ships struggling to get clear of the Road of Calais. They have long, low hulls, with pronounced beaks in the bows. They have single masts, which carry the triangular sails that the sailors call ‘lateens’. At the sterns, they have curious structures which resemble half-upturned sea-shells. Half way along their decks are squarer upperworks that resemble small castles. From these protrude several large guns, only a little smaller than the great guns mounted in their bows.

They are a glorious sight. Their banks of oars move in unison, propelling them swiftly through the calm waters. Even in Calais, amidst all the noise of our own activity, we can just make out the sound of their drums, beating out the rhythm for the rowers. We can see the morning sun glinting on the armour of the hundreds of soldiers lining their decks. And we can see the red and gold banners of Spain spilling out as the galleys create their own breeze, while our ensigns of Saint George hang limply.

‘God’s blood,’ he cries –

 

Matthew, Earl of Ravensden

 

‘God’s blood, send us a fair wind!’ But we had not a whiff of one. Not one [expletive deleted] whiff. ‘Master Carver! Can you not but find us a breath or two of breeze, man?’

Even as I uttered the words, I knew they were hopeless. Carver had men adjusting the topsails every few minutes, the main courses nearly as often, but no matter what he did, there was no wind. We caught no breeze off the land. We found no hint of a westerly even when we were out beyond the shelter of Grease Ness.

My ships, and those of the Bastard Orange, were making a knot or two, if that, as we struggled to make any way at all. Even the Dutch cromsters, trim little war-craft with lateen sails at their mizzens, could make but poor progress. And out at sea, in the very centre of the Strait of Dover, the six great galleys were doing a good twelve knots. I’d served with enough men who’d been slaves in the galleys, and knew from them that to keep up this sort of speed, the rowing masters would be pushing the oarsmen to the very limit. I could imagine the whips cracking on flesh, the blood and sweat of the men as the sweeps cut the water. They could not maintain such a tempo for long. But then, they did not need to. The night and the mist had given them the advantage of surprise, the calm now gave them the advantage of speed, and in truth, the Straits of Dover form but a very small stretch of sea. The galleys’ bow waves of white foam were all too visible to we slugs becalmed at Calais, a sure sign that they would soon be past us. But as I clung on to the foremast shrouds, waving my fist at the distant enemy, I knew it was even worse than that. For if we had no wind, then neither did Leveson, Raleigh and Tom Howard over in the Downs. They would be doing the same as us, trying somehow to find a decent breeze and sea-room, but like us, they would be failing. The Spanish admiral, whoever he might be, was both bold and lucky, and in fighting at sea, those are the only qualities an admiral needs.

The Battle of Sesimbra Bay, 1602, which also featured Spinola's galleys, and which also appears in The Rage of Fortune
The Battle of Sesimbra Bay, 1602, which also featured Spinola’s galleys, and which also appears in The Rage of Fortune

But as I watched the impressive sight of the galleys, rowing through England’s private lake as though they owned it, a suspicion grew upon me that the Spanish admiral had more qualities than those alone. This was not some chance raid, not some hare-brained mission dreamed up on the spur of the moment like so many of the expeditions of, say, Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh. Or Matthew of Ravensden, come to that, if I am honest. A voyage so daring, with such high stakes and high risks, required meticulous planning and preparation. It required careful rehearsal of different options: for instance, the possibility of sending galleys into the English Channel in winter. Suddenly, the fight that had nearly done for my Merhonour, and forced us into Nantes to repair, made perfect sense, although the thought was not a pleasant one. God alone knew what a Spanish admiral so efficient and so ruthless – for sending a galley full of several hundred men into northern waters in November, when it would most likely be swamped by the sea, was ruthless beyond measure – yes, God alone knew what such an admiral might achieve.

There was only one consolation. I looked over to the Dutch flagship, and could see Justinus of Nassau clearly, standing there on his quarterdeck. He had buckled on his breastplate, but he wasn’t laughing now, by Christ. He was as still as a statue, staring at the huge galleys as they moved away inexorably, out into the North Sea. Oh, they’d be a threat to England, all right – Drake hit that particular nail well and truly on its head – but they were ten times the threat to the Bastard Orange’s upstart rebel republic, with its entire economy dependent on sea-trade and all its main ports standing on shallow waterways where galleys were in their element. If the Spanish admiral got safely into Sluys, as he was now nearly bound to do, the Dutch were in more shit than the gong-farmers of Cheapside.

The balance of the war had just changed, there was no doubt of that.

Flashing Blades and Swashing Buckles Revisited

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Pretty full on with work and Christmas-related commitments this week, so I thought I’d reblog a post from four and a half years ago – which, although, it’s probably immodest to admit it, is ohttps://jddavies.com/2015/08/05/admiral-compress-and-conflate/ne of my personal favourites out of the ones I’ve written over the years. Reading through it again, I can’t see anything I’d want to change, or even to update, which is itself a reflection of how rarely modern or historical naval subjects get exposure on film or TV. The only exception that I’d have added would be the film about Michiel De Ruyter, released in Britain and the US as Admiral: Command and Conquer, which received extensive coverage on this site (notably here and here). The seventeenth century per se has fared a little better: since I wrote this, we’ve had The Musketeers (which I reviewed here, but which subsequently departed further and further from historical accuracy, albeit still providing great fun as it did so, before ending with peak Rupert Everett, beyond which no series should ever venture to go) and Versailles, which for some reason, I never got round to reviewing; I’ll have to remedy that when series two comes along.

Before I take you back to the summer of 2012, though – yes, before that happened. And THAT. And, oh my God, that – I’ve got some great news. Early in the new year, I’ll be posting a new guest blog by Frank Fox, the acknowledged authority on the warships and battles of the later seventeenth century. Frank’s earlier posts on the fleet lists of the Battle of the Texel / Kijkduin in August 1673 made a major contribution to our understanding of this hugely important engagement by providing the most comprehensive and accurate listings ever put into the public domain. Now he’s taken on arguably an even more important battle, Barfleur in 1692, one of the greatest triumphs of British sea power before the days of Nelson, which effectively ended one of the earliest and best hopes of a Jacobite restoration. Despite its importance, no accurate listing of the combined Anglo-Dutch fleet has ever been published. That all changes, exclusively on this website, in the new year!

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A fun thread developed on Twitter last week: the ‘best navy films ever’. This followed a piece in The Huffington Post which presented quite a decent list, and most of the Twitterati involved in the discussion concurred with its choice of the likes of Das Boot and Master and Commander. (A subsequent attempt by yours truly to start a thread on ‘worst navy films ever’ got no further than the first mention of U-571.) Different national perspectives affected the responses, though. Many Brits, yours truly included, would place The Cruel Sea up at the top of the list, while there were honourable mentions for the likes of Battle of the River Plate, Sink the Bismarck, Hornblower (both the Gregory Peck film and the Ioan Gruffydd TV films) and In Which We Serve, still oddly moving despite Noel Coward laying on propaganda and pathos alike with the largest trowel he could find.

All of these were staples on TV when I was growing up, and I think they probably had a strong subconscious influence on me when it came to writing the Quinton novels. The same was true of some of the rather cornier seaborne epics, such as Errol Flynn in Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk. But the Twitter thread got me thinking about some of the other films and TV series that had influenced me, and some happy memories flooded back. There was Sir Francis Drake, for example, a classic 1960s series from ITV; I must have seen repeats, for IMDB tells me it was originally shown in 1961-2 when I was probably still watching the likes of Andy Pandy and the Woodentops. Later, school summer holidays always seemed to involve the annual repeat of The Flashing Blade, a badly dubbed, atrociously plotted but somehow compulsively watchable French series set against the backdrop of the Franco-Spanish wars in the 1630s. I actually acquired The Flashing Blade on DVD a while back, and while the clunky aspects are more obvious to me now than they were then, it was in many respects pretty exciting stuff. Intellectually stretching stuff, too, for kids aged (say) 10-14, so here’s a thought: would any TV company in any country now dare to make a children’s TV series set during an obscure seventeenth century war, and dealing with reasonably complex historical, political and religious issues?

As for films that impacted on me during my formative years, a troubling number seemed to star Tony Curtis. I’ve already referred in this blog to the fact that I can’t read the word ‘Vikings’ without thinking of those two perfectly cast Norsemen, Tony C and Kirk Douglas, in the film of that name; and when I finally go off to the great library in the sky, my instructions specify that I want the sort of Viking funeral that ends the film, with blazing arrows fired into a longship as it drifts off into the sunset. (‘Health and Safety’, I hear you say? Pah, namby-pamby nonsense.) Then there was Taras Bulba, with Tony cast as a Cossack. Let me repeat that: Tony Curtis. As a Cossack. Complete with Brooklyn accent. Another classic piece of casting for the great Tony was as an English peasant and lost heir to an earldom (still with the Brooklyn accent) in The Black Shield of Falworth, possibly the first film during which I spent much of my time shouting at the TV to register my disapproval at the endless catalogue of historical inaccuracies. (Now, of course, I can appreciate it on its own merits as a piece of prime Hollywood ham, and great fun, to boot – for yes, I have the DVD of that, too.)

Then came the early 1970s. What a golden age, and looking back, what an influence it had on me! On TV, The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R, plus the rather less well remembered The First Churchills – pretty much the one and only time the politics and personalities of the period 1689-1714 have ever got an outing on TV – and Timothy West as Edward VII. And on film: The Three Musketeers. Not the increasingly risible efforts of recent years: the Richard Lester version of 1973, brilliantly scripted by George Macdonald Fraser of Flashman fame. Perfect casting, apart from Michael York being impossibly old as D’Artagnan; will there ever be a better Athos than Oliver Reed? Even Charlton Heston, another piece of fine old Hollywood ham (as on the two occasions when I saw him on the London stage, in A Man for All Seasons and The Caine Mutiny) – yes, even Chuck managed to look more like Richelieu than anyone else who’s ever played him, and got the character pretty well spot on too.

So all in all, I think I was lucky in terms of the TV and films that came along when I reached important formative stages in my childhood and youth; for someone who, even then, had aspirations to be a historian and author, the diet was absolutely ideal. I wonder what, if anything, now exerts the same sort of positive influence on potential young historians and historical authors of the future? Pirates of the Caribbean? Downton Abbey? Horrible Histories? Ultimately, as I learned countless times during my teaching career, it doesn’t matter what turns a young person on to history, or a particular aspect of it. Any means to the end is absolutely fine; yes, even if the means in question is Captain Jack Sparrow…

A New Era

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At long last, after having to keep things under wraps for some time, I’m finally able to reveal some really exciting news!

Firstly, great news for all Quinton fans – the series continues! Next year, the 350th anniversary of the Dutch attack on the Medway, will see the publication by Endeavour Press of the seventh book in the chronological Journals of Matthew Quinton, set against the backdrop of the astonishing national humiliation which many regard as the worst defeat in British history. And I can now reveal that the title of the new book will be…

Random picture to increase tension - the Dutch in the Medway, by William Schellinks
Random picture to increase tension – the Dutch in the Medway, by William Schellinks

…wait for it…

The Devil Upon the Wave.

(The title is derived from one of the most famous ‘one-liners’ in Pepys’s Diary, namely his colleague Sir William Batten’s scatological comment on 19 July 1667 – ‘By God, says he, I think the Devil shits Dutchmen’.)

It’s very early days in the process of writing the story, but Matthew will certainly be at the heart of the drama in the Medway, and also engaged in action in the open sea, albeit not quite in the way one might expect. There’ll also be an encounter with one of the most famous figures in the whole of naval history!

As an aside, this might be a good time to mention the fact that a lot of exciting events will be happening in the summer of next year to mark the anniversary of the Dutch attack, many of them, naturally, in the Medway area. I’m involved in a number of events, including a major conference in Amsterdam which I’m helping to organise, so expect many more updates on all of this in due course.

Returning to the Quinton series, though…

Long-time readers of this blog and fans of the series will know that I’ve also written a book set at the end of the reign of Elizabeth I, with Matthew’s eponymous grandfather as its central character. I’ve not said anything about The Rage of Fortune for some time, because a number of editorial and contractual issues arose with it, and these have delayed publication far beyond its intended appearance in 2015. But I’m delighted to be able to announce that these issues have finally been resolved, and that Endeavour Press will be publishing The Rage of Fortune in both e-book and print-on-demand formats in the near future. I hope to provide a more detailed ‘taster’ of the book on this site soon!

Finally, Endeavour will also be publishing a second, shorter, Quinton ‘e-story’, following on from the series prequel Ensign Royal (which, as I indicated a couple of weeks ago, is now available again). Provisionally titled Quinton and the Princess, this, too, is set before Gentleman Captain, the first book in the main series. Which Princess, you ask? Well, fans of the recent TV series Versailles might have an idea! We’re hoping that this story will come out well before the end of next year, and regular updates will be provided on this website.

And even more good news…I know that readers have been struggling to get hold of copies of the fourth Quinton book, The Lion of Midnight, and that copies of this have been turning up on Amazon, etc, for absolutely ridiculous prices. (Rumours to the effect that all of these copies seem to be being sold by a shifty Welshman living in Bedfordshire are, of course, entirely unfounded.) Fortunately, Endeavour have just released the new e-book edition, while Old Street are reprinting the print version, so The Lion should be readily available again very soon.

So all in all, these are exciting times here at Quinton Towers, so it’s undoubtedly a good time to thank all those of you who’ve read the books. It’s great to receive feedback, and most of the comments I get from readers are hugely positive, giving me a very powerful incentive to carry on writing!