* “Ship dead ahead! Alter course to larboard!”
* My Darling Marie:
I write in great haste, for though we are entering the Goulet that leads into the Rade de Brest, an English frigate is all but upon us and the wind will not allow any ships to come to our aid. We will surrender if we must, but fight if we can. I do not know what the next hours will hold. My fate is in the hands of God, and if I meet Him I will regret nothing in this life but the loss of the days I had hoped to share with you.
* “Prepare to receive boarders! Do not make any sign of resistance or our ship will open fire.”
HISTORY AND FICTION
The War of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars have been fodder for novelists from the outset, and novels set in the British Navy of that era have long been a species of their own. If anyone can lay claim to having invented the type, it would likely be Frederick Marryat (whose books appeared between 1829 and 1847). His novels were immensely popular and surprisingly highly regarded; he counted Dickens among his fans. Marryat actually served in the Royal Navy during the period, so we must assume he got the details right, although with the caveat that “realism” as a literary movement was still many years in the future.
To set off into these same waters is to invite comparison, if not accusations of imitation. It can’t be helped. Reviews of the early Patrick O’Brian novels compared them to C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower books and generally found Jack Aubrey came off second.
People always want to know, when reading a historical novel, what part is fact and what part is fiction. If the novel, as has been said, is about truth rather than fact, I think the question should be asked, “What part is fact and what part truth?”
As to the facts, in writing Under Enemy Colors, I made every attempt to get the history right, to be accurate regarding the details, and to recreate the atmosphere to the best of my ability. In this I have been much aided by having spent most of my life by the water (I grew up in a house on a beach) and having sailed for thirty-five years. I am not, however, a trained historian. I am a novelist and I’m sure I have made some mistakes. My apologies to the experts among you.
Almost all the main characters are fictional, with the exception of the First Secretary of the Navy, Philip Stephens (later Sir Philip). Various historical personages are referred to but do not appear (Admiral Howe and Tom Paine, for instance). None of the fictional characters are based on specific historical figures, though I must say that Captain Bourne was influenced by the many great frigate captains of the era, Henry Black-wood being my personal favorite. All of the events could have happened, and in some cases similar events did happen. The characters in this book were so numerous that I reduced the size of the gunroom mess to essential members, which meant as important a figure as the purser was never seen. If I have taken some liberties with historical detail, it is in the court-martial, where accuracy has been slightly compromised for dramatic reasons. In every other way, I have tried to make the book as authentic as available resources would allow.
The Themis is a fictional ship and conforms to no class of frigate, though she would have been similar to the Pallas class. In fact, her existence in 1793 is slightly problematic, as the first eighteen-pounder thirty-twos (to the best of my knowledge) were not commissioned until 1794. I thought Captain Hart would have a thirty-two-gun frigate, because he had too much influence to be sent into a twelve-pounder twenty-eight, but his detractors would have prevented him from being given a larger thirty-six-or thirty-eight-gun frigate. The thirty-two seemed to suit him perfectly, and I wanted a battery of eighteen-pound guns so that she could feasibly take on the larger French frigates. Thus the Themis was slightly ahead of her time.
One of the things that always astonishes me when I’m watching a film that involves a sailing ship is how the captain orders a course change and the helmsman simply spins the wheel and off they go in a new direction. As anyone who sails knows, virtually every time you change course you trim your sails. Unless you are sailing in the trades or the westerlies, winds have a frustrating habit of varying, often in both direction and strength (in truth, they can do this in belts of “constant” winds too). I remember a day when a friend and I set out to sail back to our home-harbor—an easy day’s sail. We began the morning wearing bathing suits and sunglasses, with a lovely fair wind from the north-west. Sixteen hours later, in a howling southeast gale, we tied up at the dock wearing, beneath our foul-weather gear, every piece of clothing we had aboard. In between we’d had wind from all points of the compass. We’d been becalmed, drenched in a deluge, and chilled to the bone. We changed our headsail so often that I lost count and reefed and shook reefs out of the main over and over. Imagine how much sail-handling that would have meant aboard a square-rigged ship? You might have noticed, in this book, that, unless following a change of wind, every time the course was altered, sails were trimmed and yards shifted.
So much for the facts. As to the truth, well, everything that is not fact is my attempt to reach the truth.
For devotees of Laurence Sterne, yes, it’s true, Griffiths’ rant against the lack of originality in books is taken almost word for word from Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, but in Griffiths’ defense, the brilliantly comic Sterne stole it from Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Sterne’s book, and his theft from Burton, would have been well known to readers of that time, though apparently none of Griffiths’ supper companions caught the reference.
Anyone interested in reading more about the British Navy in this era is in luck, as a little industry has sprung up publishing books to fill that need. I highly recommend Brian Lavery’s Nelson’s Navy, John Harland’s Seamanship in the Age of Sail, and the nautical dictionary titled The Sailor’s Word-book, for starters. If these three books do not satisfy your hunger, not to worry, there is a veritable feast of titles out there waiting for you.
Will there be another novel following the career of Charles Saunders Hayden? One is in the works. And yes, Mr. Barthe should reappear, as well as Wickham, Griffiths, Hawthorne, and various others from the cruise of the Themis. Look for Mr. Hayden’s new vessel to heave into view sometime in 2009.
Oh, and by the way, the scientific name for the Sardinian warbler is Sylvia melanocephala. Scorbutus cani, the name given by Hayden in the novel, translates roughly as “scurvy dog.” Hayden, apparently, thought himself a wit.
S.T.R.
British Columbia
February 2007
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book, two years in the writing and many more in planning, would never have come into being without the help of many people. I’d like to thank my friends John and Francine, who put their many years and thousands of miles of sailing experience at my disposal and read the manuscript with great care. Many thanks to John Harland for his painstaking reading of the manuscript and for putting his encyclopedic knowledge at my disposal; any mistakes, however, are mine. For the French translations I have to thank author Margo McLoughlin and author and translator Guillaume Le Pennec (who so ably translated several of my previous books into French). My agent, Howard Morhaim, read numerous drafts and, as always, gave me the benefit of his insight. I thank my editors in New York and London, Dan Conaway and Alex Clarke, for their fantastic enthusiasm and constant support. Last, but first in my heart, I thank my wife, Karen, for her support and for all of her intelligent feedback on this book from inception through to final copy. I couldn’t have done it without you, darling.
>
Under Enemy Colors Page 52