J D Davies - Historian and Author

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

Henry VIII

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!

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).