Quarterdeck CELEBRATING HISTORICAL MARITIME & MILITARY LITERATURE SPRING 2018 Quarterdeck Contents A Q J SPRING 2018 INTERVIEW 5 Julian Stockwin English novelist Julian Stockwin celebrates the launch of his 20� Thomas Kydd novel. T S C 12 Nigel Patterson The English actor discusses his role as a narrator for the Quarterdeck is published quarterly by audiobook editions of John Biggins’s Otto Prohaska novels. Tall Ships Communications 6952 Cypress Bay Drive Kalamazoo, MI 49009 COLUMNS 269-372-4673 EDITOR & PUBLISHER George D. Jepson 4 By George! [email protected] Smuggler’s Coast OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Amy A. Jepson 18 Dispatches [email protected] Gibraltar by Roy and Lesley Adkins DEPARTMENTS McBOOKS press Quarterdeck is distributed by McBooks Press, Inc. 3 Scuttlebutt ID Booth Building News from nautical and historical fiction, naval and maritime 520 North Meadow Street Ithaca, NY 14850 history, maritime museums, and marine art PUBLISHER Alexander Skutt 23 Reviews 607-272-2114 [email protected] www.mcbooks.com 25 Sea Fiction ART DIRECTOR Panda Musgrove 31 Historical Fiction [email protected] EDITORIAL DIRECTOR EMERITUS Jackie Swift ON THE COVER: Julian Stockwin and HMS Victory in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. Photo by Kathy Stockwin. © Tall Ships Communications J J Baugean 2 | SPRING 2018 SCUTTLEBUTT NEW BOOK RELEASES WILLIAM MARTIN 2018 are-book dealer Peter Fallon re- US (United States) R turns in a thrilling historical UK (United Kingdom) novel about the California Gold TPB (Trade Paperback) PB (Paperback) Rush, by New York Times bestselling HB (Hardback) author William Martin. Bound for EB (Ebook) Gold continues Martin’s epic of NF (Nonfiction) American history with the further ad- APRIL ventures of Peter Fallon and his girl- friend, Evangeline Carrington. Halfhyde and the Chain Gangs (EB) by Philip McCutchan They are headed to California, where their search for a lost journal MAY takes them into the history of Gold Rush. The journal follows young An Onshore Storm (USHB) by Dewey Lambdin James Spencer, of the Sagamore Min- ing Company, on a spectacular journey from staid Boston, up the The Passage to India (UKHB) Sacramento River to the Mother Lode. During his search for a “lost by Allan Mallinson river of gold,” Spencer confronts vengeance, greed, and racism in A Vengeful Wind (USTPB) himself and others, and builds one of California’s first mercantile by James L. Nelson empires. The book will be published in July. William Martin will be featured in the summer issue of Quarterdeck. Halfhyde Goes to War (EB) By Philip McCutchan WILLIAM WESTBROOK JUNE The Iberian Flame (UKHB) illiam Westbrook, whose de- by Julian Stockwin W but novel, The Bermuda Pri- vateer, introduced Captain Nicholas The King’s Coat (USTPB) by Dewey Lambdin Fallon last autumn, will launch the second book in his Captain Nicholas JULY Fallon Fallon series in November. Set against the backdrop of the Bound for Gold (USHB) by William Martin Caribbean slave trade, Captain Nich- olas Fallon sails with Beauty and the Halfhyde on the Amazon (EB) crew of the schooner Rascal against by Philip McCutchan French and Spanish warships and a NOVEMBER maniacal privateer called The Holy One who is anything but. The Black Ring (USHB) “All sea stories should tell you by William Westbrook something new,” said David The Devil in Paradise (USHB) Donachie, author of the John Pearce stories and the Privateersman by James L. Haley Mysteries about The Bermuda Privateer. “I was enthralled by the au- thor’s encyclopedic knowledge of the Caribbean, the cockpit of so The Bermuda Privateer (USTPB) much action over several centuries.” by William Westbrook 3 | SPRING 2018 BY GEORGE! Smuggler’s Coast OBERT LOUIS STEVEN- SON, writing in Treasure Island, described the Eng- lish coast below the Admiral RBenbow Inn in crisp, spare prose: “It was one January morning, very early – a pinching, frosty morning – the cove all grey with hoar-frost, the ripple lapping softly on the stones, the sun Anonymous artist. Circa 1807 still low and only touching the hilltops and shining far to seaward.” coast. Those words came to life for me on the My guide was our friend marine artist silver screen with the 1950 Walt Disney pro- Geoffrey Huband, who with his family lives duction of Treasure Island, starring Bobby in nearby Marazion in a seaside home, which Driscoll starring as young Jim Hawkins and has a view of St Michael’s Mount, a small Robert Newton as Long John Silver. tidal island in Mount’s Bay, and its ancient Years later, I finally was able to experience castle. the English coast firsthand. Our destination after a short drive was On a warm autumn morning, I stood on a Prussia Cove, a rugged, rocky inlet once the rocky cliff in Mount’s Bay, Cornwall, gazing lair of notorious smuggler John Carter. Be- toward France over the horizon. The sea low the bluff on which we stood, waves shimmered like a gazillion diamonds in the washing the shingle beach were the only brilliant sunshine. Lizard Point, sound. where many a ship has foundered Climbing down a steep path, it took little over the centuries, was barely visi- to imagine ourselves among Carter’s band, as ble through a haze down the illustrated in the engravings on this page, taking our ease after unloading a shipment of goods or leading a horse-drawn cart over the rocks rough-hewn with grooves from years conveying illicit contraband inland, thus es- caping paying duty. Under the cliffs were caves and tunnels Anonymous artist, circa 1807 that once concealed French brandy, wine, CONTINUED ON PAGE 35 4 | SPRING 2018 INTERVIEW Detail from cover art by Larry Rostant for the Hod- der & Stoughton hardback edition of The Iberian Flame by Julian Stockwin. © Larry Rostant JULIAN STOCKWIN Captain Thomas Kydd’s creator looks back over two decades and the first twenty books in the canon. BY GEORGE D. JEPSON EARLY TWO DECADES have passed since Julian Stockwin arrived in na- val fiction, with the pub- Nlication of Kydd, which introduced Thomas Paine Kydd, the young wig- maker from Guildford, who was pressed into the King’s service aboard the ship-of-the-line Duke William. Our first signal that a rousing new voice was coming to the genre arrived in late 2000 via email from British ma- rine artist Geoff Hunt, who was creat- ing cover art for Kydd. To contact Julian Stockwin 5 | SPRING 2018 INTERVIEW Julian for an interview, we reached out to his London About eighteen months. This included research and publisher, Hodder & Stoughton. learning the craft of writing. As I had never written any- In May 2001, Kydd was launched on both sides of thing other than university essays, business reports and the Atlantic and our first interview with the new author computer programming before, it was quite a challenge appeared in Bowsprit, the predecessor to Quarterdeck. to develop the skills required. Fortunately my wife Since then, he and his wife and literary partner Kathy Kathy is a former magazine editor-in-chief with an ex- have appeared in Quarterdeck numerous times, as the cellent sense of what “works” so she gently (but firmly) subjects of interviews or as contributors. guided my baby steps on the journey to becoming a By launch day in 2001, I had read an advanced re- successful writer of historical fiction. While I had always view copy of Kydd and was hooked. had a deep interest in all things Eighteen years later, this paragraph maritime I had to do extensive re- from the book still stirs me: search into the Georgian navy, Georgian life ashore and the char- “The hoy drove on, its single acteristics of the various types of reefed mainsail board taut, its ships and boats before I put pen to angle to the tide-driven waves paper. My library resulting in an awkward screwing certainly expanded greatly. motion. Sprawled miserably on the bottom boards under a tar- What did your initial submission to paulin were some thirty wretched, Blake Friedmann include? seasick men and boys, the press- gang harvest.” Agencies do vary in what they re- quire, but for my initial submission Tom Kydd was among the poor to Blake Friedmann the package devils. Julian’s words piped me consisted of the first three chapters, aboard that storm-tossed boat a synopsis of the whole book, a pen headed for Duke William. And at sketch of the main characters and a that point, very early in the book, I Each year the Stockwins offer covering letter with bio details, knew the author was a true man of a Collectors Set of Julian's lat- where I saw the market for the the sea. Time has reaffirmed this est book. It is strictly limited book and my plans for future over and over. to 500 sets. Full details of The books. In those days you sent this So with The Iberian Flame (see Iberian Flame Collectors Set by mail; email was in its infancy. our review on page 23), the twenti- may be found on his website: eth title in the Kydd series, about www.julianstockwin.com. How long did it take for you to to be published by Hodder & receive a response from Carole Stoughton, we interviewed Julian Blake, the premier literary agent and asked him to look back over the past twenty years, who read and accepted your proposal and manuscript? starting with his decision to write about the sea: The next stage, around six weeks later, was to send the On New Year’s Day in 2000, you submitted your first rest of the book at Carole’s request. Shortly after that proposal for the Kydd naval adventures to Blake Fried- she asked me to come to her office for a face-to-face mann Literary Agency in London.