At Drake's Command - David Wesley Hill

In 1999 I was one of the winners of the Writers of the Future Contest. We were invited to Los Angeles for a week-long writing workshop conducted by Algis Budrys and Dave Wolverton.. One morning our group was let loose in the aisles of the LA Library to browse the shelves in search of inspiration. I was mildly interested in pirates and began reading a facsimile edition of The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake.

This was not written by Drake himself but published by a nephew thirty years after Drake's death in an effort to keep alive Drake's reputation. While thumbing through the book, I came across an interesting passage. On an island off the coast of Patagonia, Drake charged one of his crew with treason and mutiny. Forty men were chosen as jurors and a trial was held. The accused, Thomas Doughty, was found guilty. Drake gave Doughty three options:

1. To be returned to England to face punishment
2. To be left behind in South America
3. To be executed

Given these choices, Doughty replied: "Please, do not return me to England since I am a gentleman and do not want to be shamed before my queen. Do not maroon me here, either, since I am a good Christian and I do not want to lose my faith among the heathen. No, general, I ask you to exercise the third option."

Drake obliged and cut off Doughty's head. Then he held it up by the hair and said, "Lo, here be the end of traitors."

Upon reading this, I said to myself, "This is utter mendacity." So I embarked on a course of research  to uncover the real story of what had happened on that bleak island (Drake called it the "Island of Truth and Justice" but the crew had another name for it: "The Island of Blood").

During the next four years I studied all of the major accounts of Drake's life and the circumnavigation, starting with The World Encompassed and including Corbett's Drake and the Tudor Navy and Wagner's Voyage Around the World. An 8-volume edition of Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations was an invaluable resource, too, since it contained much about Drake. At one point I ordered facsimiles of source material  from the British Library so that I could examine the original text.  Google Earth has also been an amazing tool, allowing me to retrace Drake's route almost day by day.

Eventually, I succeeded—at least, to my own satisfaction—in understanding what had actually transpired on that awful day in 1578. My first inclination was to write a non-fiction book about the Doughty affair. I am, however, a fiction writer, so I decided to tell the tale in novel form while paying meticulous respect for historical accuracy.

Cover Art: "The Golden Hinde off New Albion" by Simon Kozhin
Contact: info@temurlonepress.com 
http://www.temurlonepress.com

Barbados Bound by Linda Collison

It all started with a ship. On April 14,1999, I saw in the newspaper a startlingly anachronistic colour photograph of a three-masted wooden ship under sail. It looked like it had just sailed out ofthe eighteenth century. Below it, an intriguing advertisement:

Help wanted: Deckhands to man floating museum…a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sail as crew on Endeavour, the replica of Capt.James Cook’s ship that will visit Hawaii in November. Crewmembers sleep in hammocks slung together on the lower deck. They must be prepared to go aloftand work the sails at any time of day in any weather, not suffer from chronicseasickness or fear of heights, and be physically fit. Sailing experience is not essential…

     Six months later my husband and I were at the dock in Vancouver, signing ship's articles.
     We are sailors, my husband Bob and I. We have a sailboat of our own and quite a few nautical miles under our belts, but we knew essentially nothing about sailing an 18th century,three-masted tallship.  
     The crew promised to teach the recruits everything we needed to know, and so we leaped at the opportunity. It sounded like a great adventure, and indeed it was. In fact, it changed my life and gave me a new passion: Maritime history. I actually went back to college to study history, having majored in Nursing, the first time around.

     Bob and I spent three weeks aboard the Endeavour, as part of the foremast watch, crossing the Northern Pacific Ocean. We learned the names and functions of the hundreds of lines, sails and spars that power the ship; we learned to climb aloft on the ratlines, stepping out on the foot ropes under the yards to make and furl sail. We took turns steering the ship and were responsible for cleaning and maintaining her in eighteenth-century fashion. We slept in hammocks we strung from the deckhead every evening. The voyage crew,as we green-but-willing sailors were called, bonded quickly, for we were all init together and we all felt the same swing of emotions -- anxiety, fear,fatigue, exhaustion, sea-sickness, hunger, occasionally resentment – but most of all, exhilaration and awe. For me, those weeks on the Endeavour were nothing short of a time machine.

     When Bob and I disembarked in Kona, Hawaii, I carried with me the seeds for a novel. It would not be about Captain Cook or his extraordinary voyages, but it would begin in the mid-eighteenth century, aboard a vessel quite like the one I had sailed on. I wanted to explore what it might have been like to have been a woman aboard a ship; not a passive passenger but a woman who takes an active part, who is part of the crew. My research proved there were many women aboard ships in the age of sail.  At least thirty and quite likey more, who dressed and worked as men.Their stories, when told, have typically been romanticized and somewhat discredited. I wanted to bring out the gritty reality. Working aboard the Endeavour helped me experience that. My experience as a registered nurse, specializing in Emergency and Critical Care, also came into play.

     My first historical novel was five years in the researching and writing. It wasoriginally published as Star-Crossed by Knopf/Random House, and chosenby the New York Public Library to be among the Books for the Teen Age --2007. Yet I hadn't really written it for teens, but from a teenaged girl's perspective.  
     I was so caught up with the characters and the historical background that I wrote a sequel, Surgeon's Mate, which Knopf turned down. They weren't interested in a series. But Fireship Press was. PublisherTom Grundner offered me a contract for Surgeon's Mate, and offered to publish Star-Crossed under a different title as soon as he could acquire it. As soon as Star-Crossed was out of print I obtained a reversion of rights, rewrote the manuscript and signed a contract with Fireship Press.  Barbados Bound was published in July, 2012.   The story is essentially the same as Star-Crossed, but I was able to correct a few anachronisms, introduce a minor characterwho appears in the sequel -- and add back a little salty language taken out of the first edition.  At last both books are under the same publisher, or aboard the same ship:  Fireship Press.

     It all started with a ship and an adventure -- and the adventure continues.  Bob and I just returned from a four-day sail on Topaz, our 36-foot sloop.  Sailing inspires me because the sea is aforce to be reckoned with. The sea connects us, it covers most of the earth, it is a portal to the past. It provides a rich backdrop for a novel because of its power and its historical importance. The sea offeres both freedom and imprisonment, it nurtures and destroys.  I both love the sea and fear it, and I hope that conflict is apparent in my novels.  Conflict, external and internal, is what drives my writing.

Linda Collison

www.lindacollison.com

Sea of Words; charting a course from imagination to publication 

Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventures

Surgeon's Mate by Linda Collison

My first historical novel Star-Crossed (Knopf 2006) was conceived at the helm of the HM Bark Endeavour replica in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I wanted to explore what it might have been like to have been a young woman on a tall ship in the age of sail. Star-Crossed, which took nearly seven years from conception to publication was recognized by the New York Public Library as one of the Books for the Teen Age -- 2007. I had not written it as a Young Adult novel, but had told the story from the point of view of a teen aged female protagonist. The idea consumed me, and still does.

Knopf, however, had bought Star-Crossed as a stand-alone; they did not want to publish a sequel. Yet I could not forget about Patricia. I wrote the sequel, a rather disturbing account, based on all the research I had done for Star-Crossed as well as my 13-plus years in acute care nursing, and my own sailing experience. I was sure Knopf would change their mind and publish Surgeon's Mate, the follow-up. But they did not. My agent advised me to give up on the sequel and write something else. Months later I had not produced any new novels she wanted to represent, and so my agent dumped me. Kindly, but a dump is a dump and I felt as star-crossed as my protagonist, Patricia.

Three years passed. I had gone back to college for a second degree in History, with a minor in French, and I was working on another historical novel. I had almost forgotten about poor Patricia MacPherson, out there in the Atlantic Ocean where I had left her. And that's when Tom Grundner, Editor-in-Chief at Fireship Press contacted me through my website. He was very interested in both Star-Crossed and my sequel, Surgeon's Mate. In fact, he hoped I would write a series about my cross-dressing character! Oh, joy, Patricia lives! I carefully edited my manuscript, made some revisions, and sent it off to Grundner. Fireship Press publishes mainly historical fiction and nonfiction, and it seems a perfect fit.

Surgeon's Mate; book two of the Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventure Series was published by Fireship Press in April, 2011 and is available in trade paperback and electronic editions, worldwide. Grundner hopes to republish Star-Crossed if Knopf chooses not to run a second printing. Right now I'm working on Book Three of the Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventure Series, drawing on my research, my sailing and nursing experience, and driven by the character herself. What an adventure in writing and publishing!

Thanks for the opportunity to share my story on your blog; I've enjoyed reading some of the other authors' inspirations.

Yours, aye,

Linda Collison

www.lindacollison.com

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Conquest by Julian Stockwin

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, I was a software designer. I’d just signed off on my biggest and most fraught project. As I sank exhausted into an armchair, my wife thrust a large tumbler of whisky into my hand and looked me straight in the eyes. ‘Sweetheart,’ she said, ‘get a life!’ Her suggestion: that I write. And about the sea...

Once I’d overcome the initial shock and decided to give it a go, I realised there was a lot of sense in what she said. As far back as I can remember, I’ve been bewitched by the sea. Going to a decent grammar school was wasted on me; on the school bus I’d gaze out across the Channel at the low, grey shapes slipping away over the horizon on voyages to who knows where, taking my imagination with them. As a young boy I remember the thrilling drama of the Flying Enterprise, when Captain Kurt Carlsen refused to leave his sinking ship and, with First Mate Dancy of the ocean salvage tug Turmoil, heroically fought to bring her within sight of port before she tragically sank. Then, too, London Pool was packed with ships flying the red ensign, and it was also the time of the very last of the square riggers: theoretically, you could still sign up outward-bound on a commercial voyage.

The only member of my family to have any connection with the sea was a distant relative we called Uncle Tom. A gentle, quietly spoken old man, he’d been around the Horn in square sail, and whenever I could I would sit spellbound and listen to him talk about life before the mast on the seven seas.

My father thought he’d knock all this sea nonsense out of me, and sent me to a tough sea-training school at the tender age of 14. It didn’t work; there was no contest – Latin and algebra or splicing and boat-handling! So at age 15, I joined the Royal Navy, eventually becoming a petty officer and later a lieutenant commander. And 40 years later, I sat down to write about the sea.

I’m ‘Old Navy’ with a deep respect and admiration for the service, so it had to be the Navy I’d write about. I chose Nelson’s time, the great climax of the age of sail and a magnificent canvas for sea tales. This was an era when the sea was respected and wooed by men who didn’t confront the sea with steam engines and brute force. I also wanted to bring the sea itself into a more prominent role, but was, as yet, unsure how to achieve this.

I soon realised that there were things from my time in the Navy that I wanted to bring to my writing; small things, but so evocative – a shimmering moonpath glittering on the water, the sound of voices from invisible night watchkeepers, the startling rich stink of the land after months at sea, the comfort of a still hammock when the ship rolls about it, the unreal beauty of an uninhabited tropical island in the South Seas.

There were the darker memories, too. Savage storms at sea when you feel the presence of nature like a wild beast out of a cage; close inshore in a gale when you wonder if a mistake at the helm will end with those black rocks suddenly bursting in. I was duty watch in the carrier Melbourne that night when we collided with and sank Voyager – there from the seaboat I saw men’s courage at work while 80 sailors drowned.

To achieve that more prominent role for the sea, it seemed logical to take the perspective of the men who actually did the job out there on the yardarm, serving the great cannon or crowding aboard an enemy deck, rather than of those shouting orders from behind. So the lower deck it was – and then I came across some amazing statistics. In the bitter French wars at the end of the 18^th century, there were, out of the several hundred thousand seamen in the Navy over that time, only around 200, who by their own courage, resolution and brute tenacity made the awe inspiring journey from the fo’c’sle as common seaman to King’s officer on the quarterdeck. This meant of course that they changed from common folk to the gentry; they became – gentlemen. And that was no mean thing in the 18^th century.

And of those 200, a total of possibly 16 became captains of their own ship – and a miraculous half dozen to Admiral! Yet not one left any kind of record of their odyssey, how they must have felt, what impelled them to the top – and so there I had my story! They would be the basis for my central character; I’d write the story of how he endured from the level of press‑gang victim to hoisting his own flag as Admiral.

I’d deliberately take the perspective of the common seaman as my point of view, instead of the more usual officer shouting orders from behind on the quarterdeck. This would mean I could pit my hero first hand against the reality of the sea, and let him taste the salt spray in his teeth, the fear of serving one of the great cannons on the gundeck, the courage needed to work aloft on madly flogging canvas.

In fact I soon realised my book would be a series.

My initial conception of the length of the series, eleven books, (which at the time seemed almost impossibly daunting) has now been revised considerably, upwards. The more I delved into the historical record the more I found to inspire the creative juices! My twelfth book CONQUEST is just out and I am working on book 13 to be published next June. A further eight are planned.

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