Issue XVI
Contents
I
The Twenty-First Book
II
The Essential Gentleman by Kim Reeman
III Admirals All
IV The Darkening
Sea
V
Bolitho: Three Classic Tales of the Sea
I
The Twenty-First Book
If I stop to think about it I am always amazed
that it is time to put together another Richard Bolitho Newsletter, which
will eventually find its way to Bolitho's friends and readers around the
world.
Even the beginning of the series
(the first book, To Glory We Steer, published in 1968) has a touch
of fate about it. It was my American publisher at the time who suggested
that I should turn my sights to the eighteenth century navy, something
he knew had been of great interest to me since I was a little boy.
I never lost this fascination, even when I was serving in the Royal Navy
in the worst moments of the war.
I had been a professional writer
of more modern novels with a sea flavour for ten years when I set about
the task. Nobody knew what sort of reception the first book would
have or how many stories could be written about a man like Bolitho.
In the end, nobody can advise the writer -- only he or she can decide the
right approach.
There were a lot of decisions
to be made, a lot of problems to be settled. If I made the descriptions
of seamanship too technical, would it deter readers who lack such knowledge?
If I made it too simplistic, would the sea buffs toss the book aside in
anger?
Even the first newsletter was
started with a certain amount of trepidation. My publisher agreed
to print it, but it would be my task to distribute it once a mailing list
was created. A lot of envelopes and a lot of stamps!
But after the first three books
in the series had been launched, the letters began to arrive. It
is always such a pleasure to receive a letter from a reader, some one “out
there” who cares enough to put pen to paper. The numbers grew and
grew and finally the publisher took pity on me and took over the distribution
worldwide.
Who were these people, I wondered,
who rallied to my books of Bolitho's life and times? Was there an average
reader somebody I could use as a reference to decide on points of interest
or the opposite?
Now the twenty-first story
is about to be published, and I have long ago discovered that there is
no average reader. Thanks to you and your letters, and the precious
moments when I actually meet some of you at some literary function, while
signing books in a big London store or just down the road in our village
bookshop, I have learned that Bolitho has a special appeal for all kinds
of people. For the very young and the not-so-young, for professional
people, for the armed services from admirals to seamen. My biggest
surprise was that, from the very beginning, fifty percent of the letters
I received were from women of all ages.
And what of the man himself,
our Richard Bolitho? Like his readers, he has changed in some ways
and matured in the only calling he and his family have ever known.
After the heady broadsides and close actions of his early service in the
King's name, he is more aware of the politics of his profession.
I feel too, that like the many thousands of youngsters who fought in our
war, he is sometimes disillusioned by his missions and the distant and
unfathomable minds of admiralty.
His name I borrowed from a
Cornishman I met in Jersey, when I owned a boat. I was helped to pick up
my moorings in Gorey harbour on a falling tide by a kindly man who later
introduced himself as “Bolitho, Captain Richard Bolitho”. Years later
when I was researching that first book, the name came back to me.
What better name? What better man than a Cornishman? And so
it was settled.
Bolitho has changed my life
completely. From being an exciting series to write, it has become
like membership in an exclusive club.
If Richard Bolitho came to
my house in modern dress, I would know him instantly.
He has honoured me, surprised
me, moved me many times. Now in sixteen languages around the world,
in large print for those not blessed with perfect vision, in braille for
those less fortunate, in hardback and paperback, and on cassettes: a man
of his time we can all share.
He often mourns the missing
faces of his Happy Few, and blames himself for the loss of friends killed
in sea battles. A leader who can inspire proud qualities in poor
wretches dragged aboard by the hated press gangs, but one who never loses
the ability to show despair at the cost of lives lost at the cannon's mouth.
Like one of the many family portraits on the walls of the old grey house
in Falmouth, he is a part of England's history. But in his own eyes
he is just a man. A sailor.
He will never fail his readers, as he has never
failed me. As someone recently remarked, “An' that's no error! ”
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II
The Essential Gentleman
by Kim Reeman
A very young reader recently wrote that John Allday
would be the perfect friend, but it was impossible to get enough of Richard
Bolitho. She is twelve years old.
We may well ask what fascination
this man holds for the thousands of women all over the world who, since
1968, have been reading the Bolitho series. These are, after all,
novels of the sea, high adventure, technical in language and manoeuvre,
and often bloodily violent.
They are also, of course, about
people, and specifically the life and times of Richard Bolitho. Early
in his career the New York Times described him as “James Bond with
barnacles”, and certainly that youthful swashbuckling quality was very
attractive. The young Bolitho combines an undeniable sex appeal with
the finest romantic attributes; romance in the sense of gallantry, courtesy
and honour. Perhaps his appeal lies in the romance of the period:
an eighteenth century of splendour and courtliness, exquisite clothing
and manners, silks and jewels, powder and patch, the fan and the minuet.
The reality is balanced by a harsher perception of the truth -- poverty,
crime and disease -- but the Georgians epitomise elegance and beauty in
the popular imagination, and against this glittering backdrop we may fairly
set Richard Bolitho.
He possesses, too, heroic qualities.
Physical courage is balanced by compassion, and he is unafraid of showing
love for friends and dear companions or showing grief at their deaths.
Tears are no weakness in this or any man, and he who is not frightened
of showing them is perhaps the stronger for it.
He is a vulnerable man, never
certain of the love of his men or his subordinates, always personally doubtful
of his right to demand their obedience or their very lives; and strength
and vulnerability can be a devastatingly attractive combination in any
character. He is never confident in live, never arrogant, although
he has sometimes behaved with a reckless and passionate abandon in his
quest for it; and he has sometimes chosen unwisely. His second marriage
is a failure, and this too is evidence of his humanity: in attempting to
find his dead wife in another woman, he makes a decision which is irrevocable,
and which he will always regret. This marriage cannot be dissolved,
and fate decrees that while trapped in it he is reunited with the woman
he truly loves, and for whom he must now dare scandal and censure, and
perhaps place his career in jeopardy. There is no possibility of
divorce in Bolitho's England, except by Act of Parliament, and such a process
is lengthy and expensive and, of course, very public.
Bolitho's sin is not his extra-marital
relationship. Mistresses and lovers were common enough in his time
as in ours, and often the influence they wielded behind the scenes at Court
and in royal and government circles was powerful. His offense, in
the eyes of society, is his public repudiation of his wife and his angry
refusal to behave with hypocrisy: the breach is complete and irreparable
and he will not lie about it. Nor will he abandon the woman he considers
not so much his mistress but his wife in all but name; and he has certainly
waited a long time for a love so richly passionate and so emotionally sustaining.
It is an ideal of love, which many women may have found, and many wish
to find.
And finally there are the qualities
of the mature man, perhaps a more sombre, introspective Bolitho than the
“James Bond with barnacles”, and indeed the author is sometimes accused
of making him a melancholy fellow these days. The author has nothing
to do with it: Bolitho has developed at his own will and no one else's.
Perhaps he has merely acquired the wisdom of maturity, the poignant appreciation
of true values, the consciousness of the passage of time. He has
fought the same enemy in the same seas for too many years, and the price
is always too high, the friends too dear, the life too short and too precious.
He reflects, possibly, the author's own maturity, but he speaks to all
of us: the vulnerable lover, the cherished friend, the hero to be emulated,
the essential gentleman, in whose flaws and qualities there is something
of everyone.
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III
Admirals All
I am sometimes asked by readers of the Richard
Bolitho stories about the significance, meaning and origin of the naval
terms “Admiral of the Red” or “of the Blue” and so forth, and the importance
of the different flags indicating senior officers’ ships, from which signals
would be made. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,
the manoeuvrability of large numbers of ships was limited and fleet actions
were slow and difficult to control because of the simple sail-plan of the
average man-of-war. It was often impossible for an admiral to maintain
his line of battle when some of his captains were beyond visual contact.
The fleet was therefore divided
into three squadrons, each with a coloured ensign of its own: the Red,
the White and the Blue. Red, being the royal colour, was the senior,
and the various admirals were listed accordingly.
Even the ranks of the admirals
were originally established in this way: the van squadron would be commanded
by the Fleet's second-in-command, a vice-admiral, the main squadron would
be under the Red ensign in overall command. The squadron bringing
up the rear was under the flag of a rear-admiral. Later, with the
introduction of more efficient sail-plans and above all the jib-sails,
which enabled ships to pass through “the eye of the wind” and change tack
more easily, the ensign colours retained little significance.
In time of war it was more
usual for the enemy's flags to determine under which colours the King's
Navy would fight. During the American Revolution the main enemy fleets
were French and Spanish, both of which flew white national colours.
In the smoke and heat of close-action these enemy flags might easily have
become confused with the British naval White Ensign, so during this period
the Red Ensign was normally flown by the Royal Navy so that signals could
be made and understood by other British ships no matter what the conditions
at the time.
By the end of the eighteenth
century both Spain and France had changed their naval ensigns and national
flags. The King of Spain had chosen a flag with red and orange colouring,
and the French the familiar tricolour, which is still worn on their naval
vessels today. The first major sea battle to be fought solely under
the White Ensign was Trafalgar in 1805. The white stood out clearly
against the flags of the combined enemy fleets, and Nelson himself was
a Vice-Admiral of the White.
However, the old system endured
until long after Nelson's death, until it was necessary to end the confusion
created by the use of different ensigns on foreign stations and to unify
the whole. The White Ensign then became the sole naval colour; but
this did not occur until 1864, in Queen Victoria's expanding fleet.
The titles for the various admirals remained also until that time.
Their flags, too, displayed
the ranks of the admirals who flew them simply by the manner in which they
were flown. The admiral flew his from the mainmast truck, the vice-admiral
from the foremast, and the rear-admiral hoisted his at the mizzen, in the
same order of deployment as the original three squadrons.
It is more than likely that
“Our Dick”, although an Admiral of the Red, will be sailing under the White
Ensign on his next mission for King and Country. I am not at all
sure what Allday will say about that.
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IV
The Darkening Sea
 In
this, the twenty-first Richard Bolitho novel and the chronological sequel
to Beyond the Reef, Alexander Kent's immensely popular naval hero
returns to England after the capture of Martinique, and finds a brief respite
from war and politics in the arms of his mistress, Lady Catherine Somervell.
But the affairs of nations
allow little time for personal happiness, and to his surprise and dismay
Bolitho is ordered almost immediately to the Indian Ocean, where the shadow
of a new conflict already darkens the horizon as the old enemy, France,
forges an uneasy alliance with America and threatens British trade routes.
Haunted by the deaths in their
country's service of Nelson and Collingwood, and by his own vivid memories
of shipwreck and tragedy, Bolitho is well aware of the price of admiralty,
and for the first time considers the possibility of a life not only beyond
the reef, but beyond the sea itself.
IV
Bolitho: Three Classic Tales of the Sea
With All Despatch, Honour This Day
and The Only Victor chart the career of the ever popular naval hero,
Richard Bolitho, as he battles for King and Country, for his sailors who
serve him loyally and for the woman he desperately loves but cannot marry,
Lady Catherine Somervell.
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