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J D Davies - Historian and Author

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Chatham

Medway 350, Day 4

12/06/2017 by J D Davies

Inevitably and naturally, Sunday was the day for a little more solemnity; certainly rather more solemnity than that provided by the hijacker of yesterday’s post, the scurrilous shade of Samuel Pepys himself.

Above all, the day featured a service at Rochester Cathedral to mark the 350th anniversary of the Dutch attack on the Medway. For those of you who don’t know Rochester, it’s not the grandest cathedral in the British Isles. In architectural terms, indeed, it’s not in the same league as the likes of, say, Wells, Lincoln or Ely, and suffers from a bit too much input from George Gilbert Scott. It’s also literally overshadowed by the immediately adjacent castle, the keep of which still towers over it, and which was the scene of one of the most remarkable and brutal sieges in the entire history of warfare – brilliantly described by my author chum Angus Donald in his The Death of Robin Hood, and rather less brilliantly in the ludicrous film Ironclad.

But Rochester Cathedral makes up in spades for all of this by the sheer weight of history contained within its ancient walls. It’s the second oldest cathedral in the British Isles, and Christian worship has taken place continuously there since 604 AD, which isn’t just ‘older than the USA’, the usual barb that we historically smug (or, alternatively, overburdened) Brits deploy against our cousins across the pond. but significantly older than England itself, too. Dickens knew it well, and based several scenes in its environs. (Indeed, the weekend also coincided with Rochester’s annual Dickens festival, which meant that several of those attending the service were in splendid Victorian garb.) The cathedral also has many connections with my own field of interest – in 1673, the French Huguenot admiral, des Rabesnières, was buried there after being killed while leading his fleet’s rear division in the Battle of Solebay, while a slab in the nave commemorates Captain Christopher Fogge, who died in command of the Third Rate Rupert in 1708, and other naval memorials, including the ship’s bell of a previous HMS Kent, can be found throughout the building.

This, then, was the setting for the service, which also marked the formal ‘seating’ of the new Mayor of Medway in his designated place in the cathedral quire. At first, I thought that doubling up the mayoral installation and the Medway commemoration was a bit inappropriate, but as the service unfolded, it became clear – to me, at least – that it was anything but. For one thing, the frankly ludicrous mayoral garb, complete with red robes, chain, and tricorn hat (not to mention the mace and its bearer, a kind of Kentish version of Black Rod) gave the proceedings an air of history that no amount of modern-day naval dress uniform and ‘men in suits’ (or even ‘women in crinoline’) could possibly provide, while the fact that the Mayor of Medway is also, for goodness sake, ‘Governor of Rochester Castle and Admiral of the River’, presumably in succession to the former Mayors of Rochester, and has been exercising the right to be installed in the cathedral since 1448, gave the whole proceedings a sense of historical continuity that stretched back a long way before the Dutch attack. Anthems with music composed by Daniel Purcell, the less famous brother of Henry, gave another sense of the seventeenth century, as did the entire order of service – the key elements, and most of the words, of the Anglican evensong service would have been very familiar to those who tried to defend Chatham in 1667, although they might well have baulked at the notion of the Old Testament lesson being read by the Dutch ambassador.

Today, though, it’s back home, to normality; or, in other words, there’s a lawn in Bedfordshire that needs mowing. Part of me wishes I could be back in Medway next weekend for its ‘Medway in Flames’ event, a spectacular show promised for Saturday evening. Instead, I’ll be in Portsmouth, attending, and presenting a report at, the AGM of the Society for Nautical Research.

***

Cockham Wood fort

Finally, though, and by way of a slight – but by no means complete – digression, I thought I’d mention two more naval history ‘memorials’, of very different kinds, that I visited during my stay in Medway. One is Cockham Wood Fort, a direct consequence of the Dutch attack – built in 1669, it was one of several new fortifications built along the river to ensure that such a disaster could never occur again. But the relentless power of several centuries of tides has very nearly done for it; large chunks of fallen brickwork lie in front of the surviving structure of the lower battery, and it seems probable that a few more decades will completely obliterate the remains of the fort.

The other memorial is the huge memorial to the men of the Royal Navy’s Chatham Division who were killed during both World Wars. Identical in pattern to the memorials at Portsmouth and Plymouth, this one stands in a very different location, high on the hill overlooking Chatham and Rochester. While this makes it much more prominent than either of its siblings, the distance from built-up, and thus more easily policed, areas means that it has been a target for vandals, to the extent that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission now only opens it between 8.30 and 5.00 – and when I went there, it wasn’t open at all. In one sense, this wasn’t a major issue for me, as I’d visited it before, but the principle of having to restrict access to such a hugely important part of Britain’s naval heritage is a depressing comment on some of the worst traits of modern society.

This much I know, though: every single name inscribed on the Chatham memorial is worth a thousand or more of the vacuous pondlife who find it entertaining to deface it.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Chatham, Cockham Wood fort, Medway 350, Rochester

Medway 350, Day 2

10/06/2017 by J D Davies

Over breakfast in my hotel, there was barely audible and intermittent talk to the effect that something vaguely political seemed to have happened overnight. Obviously, I paid no heed to this, as whatever it was, it was clearly completely insignificant compared with the important business of the day, i.e. checking out Chatham Historic Dockyard’s temporary exhibition on the Battle of the Medway on its first day of opening.

I’m not allowed to show you pictures from the exhibition, so here are some old guns instead

The exhibition in question is housed in No.1 Smithery, and brings together some excellent materials about the events of 1667. Unfortunately, I can’t show you any pictures of them, as photography is banned. But you can see, inter alia, this picture, and this one…and this ship model, despite the fact that this and the other big one on display have been the subject of some controversy… One of the links from the notorious Medway chain is on display, as are a number of pictures I’d never seen before, including one of Sheerness fort in flames. But as is so often the way these days, I went away from the exhibition with a nagging sense of slight disappointment. Part of this can be attributed to some utterly bizarre decisions over arranging the display – why highlight Marvell’s Last Instructions to a Painter as a really important source for the effects of the battle, reproduce the complete text on a wall, and then cover much of that text with pictures? Some of it was undoubtedly due to several slipshod and completely unnecessary factual mistakes in some of the interpretive text panels; OK, I’m probably one of very few visitors who’ll get exercised by the fact that Pepys is said to have become secretary of the Admiralty in 1672 when it was really 1673, but an exhibition of this sort really should get such basics right.

The most important cause of my mild irritation, though, was one that I’ve alluded to before in this blog – the current orthodoxy among exhibition curators which seems to insist upon exhibiting as little as feasibly possible. Thus the fairly substantial amount of floor space was effectively occupied by just three ship models and the link from the chain, and although one could undoubtedly argue that leaving lots of space around them makes these exhibits stand out and provides plenty of room in which to admire them properly, one can’t help but feel that it would have been easily possible to fit in just a little bit more. No doubt outraged museum curators will denounce me as an out-and-out reactionary whose idea of a perfect museum is the Pitt Rivers in Oxford (OK, it’s a fair cop, guv), but the cynic in me hopes that the minimalism of modern museums and exhibitions is driven solely by a genuine, if misguided, philosophy of the use of space, and not to ensure as much standing room as possible for the prawn sandwich brigade at the corporate junkets often held in said museums and exhibitions.

I’m still not allowed to show you photos from the exhibition, so here are some old futtocks instead

Having said all that, please don’t get me wrong: I think you should definitely go and see this exhibition, which is well worth going to for the ship models alone. It’s also great to see seventeenth century naval warfare getting such high-profile exposure, so I’m very happy to live with any slight quibbles about the amount on display. And it’s included in the price of the general ticket to the historic dockyard, which is astonishingly good value, especially as it permits unlimited return trips during the course of a year. Chatham’s new Command of the Ocean galleries are tremendous, and include the ‘ship under the floor’, the substantial remains of the eighteenth century warship Namur, which were, quite literally, found under a floor! Plus the dockyard has a working ropery, a WW2 destroyer, a Cold War submarine, a Victorian gunboat, and much more besides… Indeed, there’s a pretty high chance that I’ll be making my first all-inclusive repeat visit before the end of the weekend!

 

Filed Under: Naval history, Uncategorized Tagged With: Chatham, Medway 350

Medway 350, Day 1

09/06/2017 by J D Davies

Objective 1: exercise democratic right for which countless of my forefathers (and foremothers) fought and died, even if it’s distinctly academic in a constituency with a 25,000 majority and no Monster Raving Loony candidate.

Tick.

Objective 2: successfully negotiate A1, M25, Dartford Crossing, M2, to get to Chatham.

Tick.

Objective 3: arrive at Historic Dockyard in time for launch event of festival commemorating 350th anniversary of the Dutch attack on the Medway.

Tick.

Objective 4: record impressions of said event in pithy blog post, then shower, change, eat, talk to capacity audience at Gillingham library, and then also record impressions of same in said pithy blog post. (The talk, not the showering, changing or eating.)

OK objective 4, here we go, then…

The launch event was a slightly curious affair. The Dutch sent a cousin of the king, who somehow still doesn’t qualify as one of their royal family. This is because said institution is the size of…well, a real family, unlike that of the UK, where even the pet gerbil of any great-great-great-grandchild of King George V is defined as a member of the royal family, and getting on for 6,000 people have a place in the royal line of succession. They also sent a general who made a number of endearingly rude jokes, including Pepys’s famous line ‘the devil shits Dutchmen’ – not his, incidentally, but reported speech from another – whereas we Brits could only muster a council functionary (speech: inaudible) and an admiral (speech: tolerable, until he went off into an Arthur Bryant-esque ‘Pepys was the saviour of the navy’ panegyric which very nearly caused your humble blogger to leap up and bellow ‘Oi! Pepys! No!’).

‘Don’t start playing until you see the whites of their eyes’

The Marine bands of the two countries duly made their entrance, and then engaged in what sometimes seemed to be a macho stand-off and ‘silliest march’ competition – the Dutch winning hands down because of their penchant for marching backwards and sideways simultaneously, an underhand trick akin to their breaking of the chain in 1667. The choice of music seemed to have been determined at least partly by a need to avoid ‘political incorrectness’, given the circumstances (this was, after all, a stonking defeat for the hosts, and an even more stonking victory for the guests). So there were no national anthems, no ‘Rule Britannia’, and no Dutch equivalent of the latter, which is believed to translate loosely as ‘Yo, Brits, we is in your river, dudes’. The prince unveiled a plaque, although most inconsiderately, the Royal Navy’s honour guard had plonked itself directly in my camera line to the event in question.

Orange is the new black

With showering, changing and eating duly ticked, I headed over to Gillingham library. The title of my talk was ‘The Dutch are Coming! Writing Fact and Fiction about the Anglo-Dutch Wars’, and I had a full house of eighty or so really attentive and engaged Medway-ites. As I said at the start of the talk, it was a real relief to be in one of the few parts of Britain where pretty well everybody knows that such things as Anglo-Dutch Wars took place at all. After that, the audience laughed at my jokes, responded brilliantly to the first ever public reading of a scene from the new Quinton novel, The Devil upon the Wave, and asked some really penetrating questions, several of which gave me genuine pause for thought. So all in all, it was an excellent evening – although when I finally reached licensed premises, there seemed to be an unusually large number of politicians cluttering up the TV screens, for some unfathomable reason.

Target for tomorrow (OK, yes, today by the time this post goes online) is to check out the brand new 1667-themed exhibition, ‘Breaking the Chain’, at Chatham’s Historic Dockyard, aka ‘the set of Call the Midwife’. It’ll be the first day of public opening, so watch this space for one of the very first reviews on the interweb-thing!

 

 

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Chatham, Medway350

The Tailed Men are Coming! The Tailed Men are Coming!

25/01/2017 by J D Davies

Oliver Cromwell as a 'staartman' (Rijksmuseum)
Oliver Cromwell as a ‘staartman’ (Rijksmuseum)

Yes, a bonus post this week – and following on from the last one, ‘The Butterboxes are Coming! The Butterboxes are Coming!’, which used one of the principal insults seventeenth century Brits directed at the Dutch, I thought I’d even the score by using one of the worst Dutch insults for us. Goddeloze staartman, the godless tailed man, has obscure origins, but it’s certainly a level above butterboxes in terms of inventiveness – and contemporary Dutchmen may wish to revive it when British naval history’s finest hit Amsterdam in June! That’s the reason for this extra post: I’m now able to publicise details of the big international conference to mark the 350th anniversary of the Dutch attack on the Medway.

Jointly organised by the Vrienden van de Witt (NL) and the Naval Dockyards Society (UK), the conference will be held at the Marine Etablissement (naval barracks) in Amsterdam on 23-24 June 2017. Conference proceedings will be held in English. The keynote speakers are Dr David Onnekink (Utrecht University) and Professor Henk den Heijer, (Professor Emeritus, Leiden University); the summary and conclusions will be provided by Professor John Hattendorf (US Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island).

The conference will address a wide range of themes, including the causes and course of the second Anglo-Dutch war, early modern naval warfare and ideologies, the Dutch and British navies, dockyards and other naval facilities in the two countries, Dutch amphibious tactics during the Chatham attack, British responses to that attack, and the legacies and commemoration of the Dutch raid. I’ll be talking about ‘Chatham and the Stuart Monarchy’, looking at how much damage – physical and psychological – the attack caused to Charles II’s state, at some of the myths which grew up around the action, and how it contributed to a change in the ‘naval ideology’ espoused by Charles and his brother. This is very much a part of the work I’m doing at the moment for my chapter in the forthcoming book on Western Naval Ideology, 1500-1815, which I’m co-editing with Alan James and Gijs Rommelse, to be published by Routledge.

Other speakers are: Dr Marc van Alphen (Netherlands Institute of Military History, The Hague), Dr Richard Blakemore (University of Reading), Dr Ann Coats (University of Portsmouth and the Naval Dockyards Society), Dr Remmelt Daalder (Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam), Dr Alan Lemmers (Netherlands Institute of Military History, The Hague), Dr Philip MacDougall (historian and author, NDS), Erik Odegard (Leiden University), Dr Gijs Rommelse (Utrecht University, Fellow of the Scheepvaartmuseum), Professor Louis Sicking (Leiden University/Free University), and Dr Chris Ware (University of Greenwich).

A booking form for potential UK delegates is available on the Naval Dockyards Society website; potential Dutch delegates, please sign up via the Vrienden van de Witt.

***

Some more announcements of forthcoming events, too…

First, the eminent Dutch naval historian Dr Gijs Rommelse will be speaking at King’s College London on 21 February, his topic being ‘Mirroring Seapower: A Cultural History of Dutch-British Naval Relations’. This is open to all, and you can register for it (and find out further details) here.

Second, I’m thrilled to announce that, as part of the Medway Festival taking place around the 350th anniversary of the Dutch attack, I’ll be speaking at Gillingham Library at 7.30 on 8 June, my subject being ‘The Dutch are Coming! Writing Fact and Fiction about the Anglo-Dutch wars’. I’ll be signing my books, too!

 

Filed Under: Maritime history, Naval history, Uncategorized Tagged With: Chatham, Dutch in the Medway

The Butterboxes are Coming! The Butterboxes are Coming!

23/01/2017 by J D Davies

…butterboxes, of course, being one of the principal terms of neighbourly respect (umm…) that seventeenth century Brits used for the Dutch. They were certainly coming in 1667, culminating in the famous attack on the Medway in June, and they’re coming this year, too, for the 350th anniversary! So I thought I’d use this blog to highlight some of the events that are taking place this summer, and to flag up how I’m getting involved.

Naturally, most of the commemorative events are taking place in and around the River Medway, and the local council seems to be doing a good job of organising and publicising many of them. There’s a dedicated microsite, plus two Twitter hashtags, #BoM350 and #TnC350, the latter being the Dutch one – tocht naar Chatham, ‘the trip to Chatham’, is the delightfully jolly Dutch description of their attack! I’ll be using these hashtags throughout the spring and summer, as well as my own, #2ADW350, for the overall 350th anniversary of the second Anglo-Dutch war – tweets with that hashtag will resume in March, work permitting!

The gun battery at Upnor Castle. No passeran...but they did.
The gun battery at Upnor Castle. No passeran…but they did.

Among the events I’m particularly looking forward to are a new exhibition at the always wonderful Chatham Historic Dockyard, the presence of British and Dutch warships in the Medway (play nicely this time, please), a commemorative service at Rochester Cathedral, a river pageant, a rowing race between the two nations, and what should be a spectacular climax to the celebrations, a ‘Medway in Flames’ entertainment on the river. It’ll also be well worth getting over to Upnor Castle, then the principal source of resistance to the Dutch attack, which will have an exhibition (opening in April) and special events. There’s also meant to be an academic conference at the University of Kent, beginning on 30 June, but at the moment, details of this seem to be very sparse.

Unsurprisingly, quite a lot’s happening over in the Netherlands. There’ll be exhibitions at the Rijksmuseum and at the Dutch naval museum in Den Helder, a symposium at the former, and, no doubt, other events still to be announced. I’ll be going over for what’s shaping up to be a fantastic conference in Amsterdam on 23-24 June, jointly organised by the Vrienden van de Witt (NL) and the Naval Dockyards Society (UK); I hope to be able to provide full details of this on this website in a few weeks, but I can exclusively reveal that I’m going to be speaking at it! I’m also making sure that I factor in enough free time to take in the Rijksmuseum exhibition, too. More detail from the Dutch angle can be found on the website of the De Ruyter Foundation, run by Frits de Ruyter de Wildt, a direct descendant of the great admiral. Here you’ll find much more detailed information about the sailing and rowing events, plus the most comprehensive breakdown of event timings on both sides of the North Sea.

Willem Schellinks' drawings of 'the Dutch in the Medway' (top) and the capture of Sheerness fort
Willem Schellinks’ drawings of ‘the Dutch in the Medway’ (top) and the capture of Sheerness fort (Rijksmuseum)

As for what else I’m doing to mark the anniversary… Well, I’ve contributed a foreword to a new edition of P G Rogers’ The Dutch in the Medway, being published by Seaforth at the end of next month. Although Rogers isn’t error-free by any means, his account remains the fullest available in English, and is highly readable. I’ve also written an essay on some of the myths that grew up around the Chatham attack for a new book on Famous Battles and their Myths, forthcoming from Routledge. Above all, I’m currently writing The Devil Upon the Wave, the latest Matthew Quinton adventure, as previously flagged in this blog.  This is proving to be terrific fun to write, and it’s also very instructive – putting oneself into the position of the British defenders of Chatham, and trying to envisage what they would have seen, heard and felt, has already given me plenty of insights into the events of June 1667.

(And before any readers take me to task for referring to ‘British’ defenders, rather than ‘English’ – yes, good morning High Wycombe – I’d point out that about the only bright spot in the sorry saga of the generally supine defence against the Dutch was provided by the heroic sacrifice of Captain Archibald Douglas, who perished in the blazing wreck of the Royal Oak after a doomed attempt to defend her, so my Scottish friends have a perfect excuse to raise a wee dram or two in the general direction of Chatham on 13 June. As if you needed one.)

All in all, then, it promises to be a terrific few weeks in the summer, and a fitting commemoration of one of the most astonishing feats in the whole of naval history. Finally, though, a warning to my British readers: if you know any Dutch people, it might be worth avoiding them during June, as they could well be a bit smug.

Filed Under: Maritime history, Naval history, Uncategorized Tagged With: Chatham, De Ruyter, Dutch in the Medway

A New Era

05/12/2016 by J D Davies

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!

Filed Under: Fiction, Naval historical fiction, Naval history, Uncategorized Tagged With: 1667, Chatham, Dutch in the Medway, Journals of Matthew Quinton, The Devil Upon the Wave, The Rage of Fortune

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