Issue I
Contents
I
Living with Richard Bolitho
II "A
special sort of man"
III
The
Flag Captain
I
Living With
Richard
Bolitho
Alexander
Kent writing....
I still
do not really believe that I created the character of Richard Bolitho.
It seems almost as if he was with me for many years, waiting patiently
for the right moment to emerge and assert himself.
I have always been fascinated by the sea, and ever
since boyhood I have gathered and hoarded information about it, perhaps
without knowing, for the very purpose of putting my discoveries and dreams
into words. And of all the periods in our naval heritage I find the
era of sail to be the most fascinating. The ships, and the men who
from choice or enforcement served them, the fantastic deeds of seamanship
and survival, have given to me an interest which continues to grow with
each new situation. Part of the fascination must come from the fact
that it was a very exciting time in our history. Also, with the passing
of sail we saw an end of true self-reliance at sea, a time when every captain
had to depend on his own resources, often when he had been so long away
from superior advice and guidance, that he had little but his personal
skill and initiative to sustain him.
In our own century such independence has been reduced
to a minimum. In World War I the German commerce raiders prowled
the oceans in search of Allied merchantmen, and to a smaller extent the
submarine commanders in both world wars had some of the same freedom.
But today, with the coming of the communications satellite, long-range
radar and nuclear power, no captain is free for long to act without consultation
with some far-off authority or intelligence. With the forces of destruction
so great this curb is very necessary if we are to survive our own resourcefulness.
But in Bolitho's time a ship was not merely a weapon.
It was also a way of life for the teeming world within the hull.
Crammed together in all conceivable conditions, yet divided by the varying
demands of status and discipline, the men who served the King's ships were
beyond the wider influences of politics and grand strategy. When
they were required to give battle, which was often, they fought for each
other, for those who shared the daily hardships, and to avenge old comrades.
In actions of indescribable violence, usually at only a few yards range,
these men could still cheer as they sailed into battle, knowing that there
was no time left for doubts or hopes, and that they had only each other's
skill, or lack of it, to aid them.
To reveal the life and times of Richard Bolitho I
have had to continue and increase my span of research. Yet at no
occasion have I been bored or disappointed by my findings. It involves
gunnery and seamanship, the business of turning a ship in a gale or having
to describe a peaceful scene in harbour. Distance sailed, the food
and drink consumed, weather and the sea's face, all have to be painted
into an overall background so that the reader can discover each incident
for himself through the eyes of Bolitho rather than mine.
I have tried to make him a man of his times, and not a modern man in
fancy dress.
Fortunately I am not alone in my research.
So great is the interest in this period of time that the fact Bolitho represents
a British sea officer seems almost secondary. I receive letters from
all over the world, from very varying countries where Bolitho's exploits
have been translated. Pictures and relics, suggestions and queries
have poured in from every hand. Although I have been a writer for
some years I have never known such a thing before. It is both gratifying
and moving, and like being given some special responsibility. Because
of all this I have of course made many friends throughout the world, most
of whom I have not met, but whose contact and interest make my work so
much more enjoyable. Sometimes I feel like Bolitho's private secretary.
As I write of his life, both forward and back in
time, a small mountain of research and information continues to pile up.
Once I have decided on the general background for a new story the characters
and their own situations start to emerge. The ship for each particular
book is of course very important. I have to know her at sea and at
anchor. How she will look from the land, or to a frightened man brought
aboard by a pressgang. I must have the very feel of her, so that
I can almost smell the tar or the bilge deep in her hull. Then and
only then can I hope to bring her alive for the reader.
The characteristics often tend to take over from
me once the work has begun. Men I have decided will be strong sometimes
emerge as weaklings. Others destined for great things have been known
to die in the first chapters. In a recent story,
Enemy in Sight!,
Bolitho's young wife died under very tragic circumstances. I had
several letters complaining about this, and one made a clever and helpful
suggestion for bringing her back to life in the next book. Alas,
the next book was already finished. Her fate was decided. But
I found it impossible to explain to those who questioned the deed just
why such a tragedy had really occurred. Would anyone ever believe
me if I said that she, like certain other characters, had taken over from
me, so that I could do nothing but report what had come about?
Sea fights play a large part in these stories, and
again a great deal of planning must be done before they can be described.
Wind and sea, the bearing and course of every ship has to be watched as
closely as if I was actually standing at Bolitho's elbow. Curiously
enough my own experience in the last war has been helpful. For some
of my service was in motor torpedo boats, where if the speed and maneuverability
were vastly superior to a ponderous ship of the line, the hazards were
much the same. Being constructed of wood, the danger and fear of
flying splinters was very real. The short ranges in clashes with
the enemy were little more than in the eighteenth century.
It seemed natural that Bolitho should be a Cornishman.
Or perhaps that too had already been decided. But Cornwall has long
been the home of many resourceful and independent sailors. For centuries
the people have lived by and off the sea, and it is difficult to move about
there for long without a sight of water or a distant horizon.
To challenge the Armada or to catch fish, to go with
Nelson to the Nile or drive the famous Falmouth packet ships to the ends
of the earth, men have always been found in that country when the call
was made. Even William Bligh, whose great achievements are too often
wrongfully overcast by the Bounty mutiny, was a Cornishman, sent
off to sea at the tender age of seven years and nine months. In those
hard times you had to start young. There were miles of rigging to be understood
and mastered, for every ship had to be used like a well-tuned instrument
if she was to survive her first storm. So adept did professional
seamen become that they could find their way around the deck or aloft to
the swaying yards in a completely strange ship after a few moments aboard.
In Richard Bolitho I have tried to show a man of
action, a man of imagination, yet one capable of offering pity and love.
They are perhaps his greatest qualities, which are the best in all men.
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II
"A special sort of man"
Richard Bolitho was born in 1756 and lived out his early boyhood in
the grey stone house below Pendennis Castle in Falmouth with his elder
brother and two sisters. Like the generations before him he grew
to love the fine old house, which like the family name had become part
of his heritage. Built originally by his great great grandfather
Julius who died aboard his ship in 1646 for the Royalist cause while trying
to break the Roundhead blockade on Pendennis Castle, it had changed little
over the years. It was a focal point for the people in and around
the district, a place must discussed as were the seafaring family who owned
it. Naturally enough the house was rarely occupied by the head of
the family in any generation as he would be at sea, but his exploits were
a regular topic of conversation and discussion, as if he was always present
in person.
Like those who had gone before him, the young Richard
was sent to sea in a King's ship at the age of twelve, a midshipman in
a two-decker, to learn his trade and suffer the privations he had previously
only heard about. Going to sea was as natural as one might expect
for a member of the Bolitho family. As a child he had explored the
many coves and inlets of his native coast, joining the fishermen in their
offshore fishing boats or making his own way in anything which was available.
In those carefree times he saw the navy as a passing ship, a beautiful
creature under full sail which seemed to beckon him from afar, or the sight
of a sea officer in the town, resplendent in blue and gold, an unreachable
being who wanted for nothing. His own father was almost as remote.
Coming and going over the years, sitting by the great fireplace or walking
with his sons along the wall by the house recounting his experiences in
distant places, his ships and his seamen.
Richard Bolitho was soon to learn that life aboard
a King's ship held far more than adventure and enjoyment. Harsh discipline,
overcrowded conditions and the back- breaking work entailed in learning
everything from seamanship and navigation to fattening rats with biscuit
crumbs to eke out the sparse rations were very different from his boyhood
dreams. But as he found his feet and made his way more confidently
up the ladder of promotion he never once doubted his profession.
Perhaps because he had never expected anything else. It was part
of him, like the sea, and the house in Falmouth.
It was during the American War of Independence that
he was to distinguish himself for the first time and gain a command of
his own at the age of twenty-two. In command of the sloop Sparrow
and later the frigate Phalarope he fought many battles with his
country's enemies, at a time when the tide of war was going badly.
Outwardly he seemed to symbolise the new type of officer who was emerging
to replace the more hidebound and those who cared little for the men they
commanded. He refused to believe that written orders were an unbending
substitute for initiative, or that the rigid acceptance of old fighting
methods could never be challenged. But inwardly he had other more
personal problems to overcome. His brother Hugh had deserted the
navy after killing an officer in a duel. Worse, he had entered the
American service and taken command of a privateer against his own country.
This disgrace was to break their father's heart, and he died while Bolitho
was still in the West Indies. When he saw his father for the last
time he gave him the family sword, which appears so many times in the portraits
at the house in Falmouth. It too seemed to be part of the man and
the legend. First worn by Bolitho's great grandfather David, who
was killed fighting pirates off the African coast, it was already much
used and tarnished. Straight-bladed and lighter than more recent
designs, it still had the edge of a razor, and Bolitho knew that when he
finally parted with it it would be because his hand was devoid of life.
Throughout his tempestuous career he was to meet
countless faces, see many ships, and in the navy's confined world it was
inevitable that some personalities would appear again and again, for better
or worse as the situation decreed. And some would remain close to
him.
Thomas Herrick, once his first lieutenant in Phalarope,
was one such man. Son of a poor clerk, without influence or family
background, he was to prove himself and earn the respect of all who knew
him. He looked upon Bolitho with an affection which amounted to love,
and would die for him if need be.
Another was John Allday, Bolitho's personal coxswain.
He was perhaps even closer as he was rarely beyond call and always at his
master's side when the danger was the greatest. Allday was more than
content with his role and had been at sea for as long as he could recall.
Only once had he left it to become a shepherd and then by a stroke of fate
he was seized by the pressgang and sent to Bolitho's ship. A strange
way for a relationship to start let alone prosper, but Bolitho seemed to
have this influence, although he was not aware of it. An old sailing
master once said of him, "He is a special sort of man," but it went far
deeper. He despised those who abused authority or gained it by influence
or noble birth. And in a calling where the demands of duty and discipline
were necessarily severe he retained a sense of humanity towards those who
depended on him, and tried to ensure that they did not suffer for no good
purpose. Needless to say some of his methods and ideals were not
approved by certain of his superiors, and he was to suffer setbacks because
of their resentment and envy.
And at one point it seemed as if despair would destroy
him. The death of his young wife and their unborn child while he
was away at sea could not have hit harder, nor could he have felt the loss
so bitterly. He was to pin many of his hopes on Adam Pascoe, the
illegitimate son of his dead brother Hugh, but nursed another dread in
his heart that one day the boy might turn against him. For he had
withheld the real truth of Hugh's last years alive, knowing it would have
destroyed any hope the boy still had of making his own way.
But as usual he had to contain his personal doubts
and misgivings in order to fulfill his duty and purpose in the service
he loved so dearly. As the war with France and her allies mounted
and spread he was rarely absent from the line of battle. Responsibility,
the talent for strategy and command left him little time for much else.
And all the while, back in Falmouth, the great stone house waited, empty
but for his loyal steward Ferguson and the servants. Waited perhaps
for the inevitable, to see who would finally return to be the next, or
the last, of the Bolithos.
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III
The Flag Captain
...the
latest Bolitho Adventure
 In
the Spring of 1797 when Richard Bolitho returns to England after two years'
exhaustive blockade duty he expects to find the country alive with optimism
and fresh hope for the future. Earlier in the year Sir John Jervis
had won a great victory over a combined Franco-Spanish fleet off St. Vincent,
so that the enemy's proposed invasion across the Channel had received a
severe setback. The battle of Cape St. Vincent had demonstrated the
navy's superb fighting quality, whereas the cooperation between the French
and their ally had been disastrous.
Due to the original threat of invasion, the British
had withdrawn all their naval forces from the Mediterranean and had brought
every ship to the defence of the homeland. Now that the immediate
danger is lessened, if not removed completely, it is decided once more
to return in some strength to that area. Bonaparte's brilliant victories
in Italy, his complete mastery of the war on land makes it seem likely
that he will shift his attentions elsewhere, having failed to invade England
and seen his plans to create an uprising in Ireland come to nothing.
Many now believe that the French will move to Egypt,
and burstthe gate to India. To test the enemy's strength and
secure intelligence of his movements, a small self-reliant squadron is
formed, with Bolitho's Euryalus as flagship.
To Bolitho's dismay he discovers that instead of
growing optimism at what may prove to be the turning-point in the war,
he finds the country rocked with confusion and horror at the news of a
mutiny within the fleet at Spithead. He is torn between the sense
of duty and the need to prepare his command for sea, and his sincere belief
in the seamen's cause which he knows to be a just one. Worse, there
are rumors of an even greater threat of mutiny at the Nore, and he realises
that unless he can get the small squadron under sail, it too will become
entangled.
Unfortunately, his new admiral, Sir Lucius Broughton,
has already been personally involved in the Spithead affair, and he is
in no mood to show leniency to anyone, no matter how just his case might
appear. Under no circumstances does he intend his squadron to be
reached by mutiny, and he is quick to show his interpretation of justice.
In the blazing heat of the Mediterranean, while the
squadron repulses attacks and attempts to secure a base on the African
mainland, Bolitho is called upon again and again to stand between his admiral
and the mysterious civilian advisor Sir Hugo Draffen, a man of undoubted
authority and influence, Draffen appears to have ambitions other than helping
the squadron and is swift to use his power when an opportunity offers itself.
Apart from his demanding duties as flag captain and
the affairs of the ships in company, Bolitho has his own command to consider.
For within her massive hull there are still some who are brooding over
the mutiny and see in their admiral's mistrust and rigidity the very representation
of its cause.
In spite of the enemy's tightening embrace and the
conflict within the squadron, Bolitho is convinced that the part they must
play is vital both for their own survival and the future of their country's
ambitions.
He is very aware of his ship's influence on his own
reactions. For she is a French prize, the 100-gun former flagship
of Admiral Lequiller defeated by him, and on the deck of which he saw his
brother die in battle.
Can a ship change allegiance by an alteration of
name and flag? When called to a final challenge will he be able to
overcome those memories and disappointments and offer his men the leadership
and trust they so desperately need?
This is not only a turning-point for England but
also for the flag captain. The stepping stone to higher command where
he can invest his strategy and the understanding of close action to best
advantage. Facing each bloody broadside or dealing with intrigue
and treachery from within, he learns the full meaning of leadership and
the cost to those who seek it.
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ISSUE II
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