Issue XI
Contents
I
Naval Customs
II A Toast
to Richard Bolitho
III Colours Aloft
IV The Volunteers
I
Naval Customs
Saluting Colours
Every day aboard H.M. Ships Colours are hoisted
in the forenoon. In larger vessels a Colour Guard and Royal Marines
band will be provided to show the proper mark of respect. In all
ships officers and ratings will face aft and salute as the White Ensign
is hoisted to mark the beginning of a new day. The custom of mounting
a guard for the Colours dates from 1797 when Earl St. Vincent introduced
it, following the naval mutinies of that year.
Similar marks of respect are
shown when the Colours are lowered at sunset, 'Putting the Queen to bed'
as it is irreverently termed.
Crossing the Line Celebrations
The details
of these celebrations are fairly well known to most people today, especially
with the ever-growing popularity of ocean-cruising. Fewer probably
realise that they are carrying on very old and extremely serious religious
rites.
The Carthaginians sacrificed
to their gods on crossing the limits of navigation which to them were the
Gibraltar Straits. In 1675 every one passing through these same straits
was expected to pay a dollar or be ducked from the yardarm.
Paying a fine or undergoing
some sort of test came much earlier with the Norsemen, who expected every
one to pass the most demanding test before being accepted as a fully-fledged
seaman.
Today the Equator remains to
mark the toll-gateway to Neptune's kingdom. The ceremony may be fun for
the spectator, uncomfortable for the victim, but it is nevertheless a lasting
part of sea-lore.
Passing the Wine
Many old
naval customs have grown from the need to entertain as well as the need
to sustain the weeks and months at sea. In wardroom and messdeck
alike where social life rubbed shoulders with eating and sleeping, casual
routine became firm tradition.
In a wardroom, officers always the decanters of
port and sherry from right to left when they may if they wish to charge
their glasses, especially for the Loyal Toast to the Sovereign. It
is not commonly known that the Sovereign's health may also be drunk in
water. No one may smoke before the President of the mess calls for
the Loyal Toast, just as no weapon may be carried or unsheathed in the
mess without the penalty of a fine being ordered.
Splice the Main-Brace
This custom
implied an extra tot of rum over and above the daily issue for a particularly
demanding or arduous task of seamanship. The order to Splice the
Main-Brace was also given by the Sovereign after an inspection of the Fleet,
or for a Royal birthday.
In times of war the daily tot,
often unofficially left neat after a particularly unpleasant battle, was
a great comforter, and the daily pipe “Up Spirits” brought a ready grin.
Today, special events are still
marked by the custom, but only rarely. In 1970, on Black Tot Day
as it was unofficially called, the daily rum issue was stopped. It
was said that the modern sailor, a more sophisticated fellow than his wooden-wall
counterpart had outgrown the custom. It was also suggested that the
high-tech equipment and the need for instant readiness if required made
the heady tot of Nelson's blood redundant.
Neither reason was accepted
with much enthusiasm.
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II
A Toast to Richard Bolitho
It is now nineteen years since I completed my
research and wrote the first of the Richard Bolitho series, To Glory
We Steer. When it was published the following year, 1968, and
it was so well received I actually believed I had created a character who
would soon be sharing his adventures with readers of all ages around the
world. In retrospect I now realise that he, Richard Bolitho, that shy and
heroic man, had really discovered me.
In the years which have followed
I have also realised that my research into the eighteenth/nineteenth century
navy has never stopped, that with the first book I had merely been 'scratching
the edges' of those days of sail and of the self-dependent sailorman.
As I searched through museums
and visited harbours, stayed at locations in places as mixed as Falmouth
and Senegal to collect material and ideas, I soon became aware that I was
not alone. Letters began to arrive from readers, and as my series
progressed suggestions, old well-thumbed articles on sea-lore and actual
events made mea new filing system just for Richard Bolitho and his
times.
There have been gifts too,
many of them, which have left me both astonished and moved. Like the lady
who sent me a neatly written diary of one of her ancestors who had been
a lieutenant in a ship-of-the-line. A remarkable little book which
listed all the lieutenant's division of seamen, with a sketch of the foremast
of the ship, numbered to show where each sailor would be working aloft.
Turn the diary over and read from the back, and you discover a selection
of jokes, songs and conjuring tricks which must have kept the wardroom
in stitches. Some of the jokes were very blue even by today's standards!
Such a precious memento, yet this reader gave it to me because of Bolitho.
An older lady sent me a copy
of the original Times which announced Nelson's death at Trafalgar,
because, she wrote, “Bolitho would appreciate it more than most.”
I have often wondered at the
attraction of the man. In these islands a love of the sea, its heritage
of ships and sailors found today even in our language, is quite understandable.
But now Bolitho's stories are read and translated into fourteen languages
in countries with cultures that vary from Finland to Japan. How do
they see the man and share his hopes and his disappointments? To
me, of course, he is real. I would know him on a street, or standing
by some harbour wall watching the ships at anchor. Many people have
different ideas of how he should look, and in their minds can see him clearly
in their own way.
When I was building his family
background, photographing the house in Cornwall which was to become his
home, and gathering details of his first-described command and her company,
I sometimes saw him. In hindsight it was as if he was watching me,
waiting for the right moment to make his entrance and stamp his mold, which
would carry him through the series with me.
I have been asked on occasions
if he resembles any real-life hero. There might be one. Perhaps more
like a brother than the man himself. If you look at the portrait
of Captain Augustus Keppel as he was when he commanded the Torbay at Quiberon
Bay you may see it. The same guarded independence, the tenacity and the
compassion. Those qualities are mentioned in letters to me, enough
to make me believe that our visions of Bolitho are much the same.
Quite recently I decided it
would be nice to have a limited number of figurines created for those readers
who have made Bolitho so much a part of their lives. The task is
not yet completed, but what a flood I am getting from people everywhere!
I have an uneasy feeling that Bolitho will be the hardest critic of the
finished figurine, with Allday a close second.
As I travel around doing research
and promotion for the series I am struck by the different kinds of readers.
Old sea-buffs who could never be fooled by careless research, youngsters
who are given Bolitho as a project at school. In many schools Bolitho
is compulsory reading. A head teacher explained once that fiction is still
the best way to get them interested in history. People are often surprised
when I tell them that fifty percent of the mail I receive is from women.
They write to ask about technical details, about the days of sail and linger
on a time when gallantry and courtesy even to the enemy were the rule rather
than the exception. The early Richard Bolitho Newsletters
were produced to deal with some of the technicalities in sailing and naval
matters and have since become a regular feature.
Bolitho's home in Falmouth
has become as real as the man. Portraits of his ancestors, the outdated
family sword which he still prefers to any regulation pattern, are all
a part of him. Like many sea-officers of his day Bolitho was dismayed by
the introduction of a regulation sword during the American Revolution.
The five-ball sword, as it was called because of the arrangement on hilt
and knuckle-bow, was inferior to family blades which officers handed down
from generation to generation. I smile when I think of the portraits
in the Bolitho house. I once mentioned that a certain picture hung at the
foot of the stairs where Bolitho was regarding it with some trepidation
as he considered his next voyage. After the book was published I
had a testy letter from a fan who claimed that the portrait had been moved
from its proper position since the previous book! Even telling him
that the housekeeper had been spring-cleaning would not placate him.
And what of Alexander Kent,
if not the creator then at least Bolitho's diarist? I can only say
that my life changed completely after he arrived to share it. I had been
a professional writer for ten years prior to To Glory We Steer!,
and yet I was stunned by the effect of his adventures.
Bolitho has been kind to me,
and just a few months ago in Toronto, her home in Canada, I was married
to Kim, who once came to hear me give a talk. Because she loved Bolitho.
It seemed only right we were
married on Bolitho's birthday, and as the sunlight shone through the great
windows of St. James' Cathedral we could feel him there, watching.
When I write any other kind
of book I am left drained, with a sense of loss at the end of it. But with
Richard Bolitho I always have the feeling, the sure knowledge that he will
be back again soon to share his life with ours.
There is a moment of pleasure
when a new story is on the bookstalls, of pride too when the fleet sailed
for the Falklands in 1982. Hundreds of Bolitho books went with those
ships; perhaps some of his ideals survived the war's bitterness.
Nelson in his prayer, which
he composed on the eve of Trafalgar, put it very well – “May humanity after
victory be the predominate feature in the British fleet”.
Bolitho would approve, an'
that's no error as Allday would say. It is almost time to begin thinking
and planning the next story. As Kim and I collect the names for the
next ship's company from a quiet Cornish village church on the edge of
the sea, in the stillness of the Trafalgar cemetery at Gibraltar, or from
the files gathered over the years, I am grateful that Richard Bolitho of
Falmouth chose me.
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III
Colours Aloft!
 In
September of 1803, when Sir Richard Bolitho, Vice Admiral of the Red, hoists
the flag above the seventy-four gun Argonaute at Spithead, he quits
the land with both eagerness and foreboding. His flagship, a French
prize seized from an old enemy, is fully manned, her captain a loyal friend.
But his orders rest uneasily on his shoulders even though his knighthood,
and the fact that next to Nelson he is the youngest admiral on the Navy
List should tell him his true worth to the country he loves.
He is leaving England, troubled
by a strange coolness which has arisen between him and his beautiful wife
Belinda, embittered too by the nation's unpreparedness while France is
even stronger than before the brief Peace of Amiens.
In the Mediterranean, a sea
well-known to Bolitho in other ships, he is soon aware that in a great
war small episodes and sharp clashes of close-action can still merge into
a personal vendetta. His old enemy, Argonaute's original commander,
seems to know his every move and intention, while Bolitho's own past makes
him vulnerable to attack where less quarter can be expected than from a
sweeping broadside.
The qualities of loyalty and
leadership, and the haunting companionship of a lost love sustain him even
on the threshold of defeat.
IV
The
Volunteers
Followers of Richard Bolitho will know that Alexander
Kent has written many bestselling modern sea stories under his own name,
Douglas Reeman. In The Volunteers he turns to the story of
the men and women who served in the Royal Navy's Special Operations units,
and who were as varied as the methods they used against the enemy in the
Second World War.
Carrying out lightning raids
on hostile coasts and shipping, they became a navy within a navy, each
of them hand-picked for individual skills, all of them courageous in their
own individual ways. Nobody knew for certain if their small but deadly
operations made a real impression on the conduct of the war, but they did
their hazardous duty anyway, living often beyond hope, sometimes beyond
mercy.
This is a story about a handful
of such people, their fears and their loves, of the resilience and vulnerability
of youth at war at the time of the Sicilian and Italian invasions in 1943
and of D-Day in 1944. Some of them fought an endless fight against
fear and doubt, some of them rejoiced in the demands of combat, many did
not survive.
Perhaps they had little in
common except that they were all volunteers.
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