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
