J D Davies - Historian and Author

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

Dunwich

Flood Tide

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I’m delighted to announce the launch of my new book, Battle’s Flood, the second title in the ‘Jack Stannard of the Navy Royal’ trilogy! Published by the lovely people at Canelo, Battle’s Flood is now available for pre-order and will be released on 14 November. As with the first book, Destiny’s Tide, this is currently available as an e-book only, so ongoing apologies to those of you who prefer to hold erstwhile trees in your hands.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the cover reveal!

And here, for the first time on any platform, is a synopsis…

Battle’s Flood takes forward the story of the central character from Destiny’s Tide, Jack Stannard, an ambitious shipowner and sea-captain from the ancient, decayed port of Dunwich, ‘England’s Atlantis’ (which, incidentally, is now being held up as a potent example of the potential effects of climate change). A prologue, set ten years after the events of Destiny’s Tide during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary, reintroduces us to his headstrong daughter Meg, now grown to adulthood, and sees Jack have a strange encounter with one of the most sinister pillars of Imperial Spain’s ‘black legend’. Fast forward another twelve years to 1567, and the second of Jack’s children, Tom, joins him on centre stage. Now a highly competent ship master and trusty lieutenant to his father, Tom seems to be happily married to a wife who connects the Stannards to one of England’s most prominent seafaring dynasties, the Hawkinses of Plymouth. But not all is as it seems, either in Tom’s domestic life or in the Stannards’ dealings with John Hawkins and his young kinsman Francis Drake. Powerful forces at the court of Queen Elizabeth I have secretive plans for Jack and Tom – plans which send them on the notorious voyage of Drake and Hawkins to the coast of west Africa and then on to the Spanish-controlled Caribbean. Meanwhile in Dunwich, Meg, who harbours treasonable secrets of her own, strives to undermine the schemes of her stepmother and half-siblings, who have recruited an unlikely ally in the shape of one of the oldest and deadliest enemies of the Stannards.

Battle’s Flood moves to a dramatic and bloody climax in the historical battle of San Juan de Ulua, when Jack and Tom Stannard fight for their lives and face their destinies…

Battle’s Flood –  out on 14 November!

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I’m publishing this post on 21 October, and cognoscenti of British naval history will be well aware of the significance of the date. A happy Trafalgar Day to all, and once the sun is above the yardarm, please raise a glass with me to toast the Immortal Memory.

The ‘naval temple’ at the Kymin, Monmouth, erected by the Duchess of Beaufort, daughter of Admiral Boscawen. It commemorates all British naval victories between 1759 and the Nile in 1798. Nelson and Lady Hamilton visited it in 1802.

 

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!