Richard Woodman
Interview by George Jepson
Tall Ships Books

In this Author Interview, Richard responds to questions on The Guineaman and his other writing projects. He also shares his feelings about being at sea and his gaff-rigged cutter, Andromeda.

GJ What was the genesis of The Guineaman?
RW I'm given to a rather disorganised system of plot creation, so questions that seem obvious to the interested reader are sometimes curiously difficult to answer. The Guineaman actually arose from having been asked to create a new historic series by Edwin Buckhalter of Severn House. His brief was simple: any period I liked and say four to six books. I am normally meditating several ideas for stories (there are currently four notions on the back burner), some of which will probably never mature, while others will trouble me until I think I am ready to write them. It's rather like having new acquaintances and wondering which of them you are going to get to know really well. Sometimes an idea will bubble for a couple of years. Wager was like that. Having been told I shouldn't write about a woman at sea, I finally found I had to, just to exorcise Hannah Kemball from my mind and clear the decks, as it were, for new ideas. Edwin's request concentrated my mind and I decided to return to the 18th Century, start my new protagonist at an earlier period than Drinkwater and so The Guineaman emerged in the person of the young William Kite. I initially had in mind the notion of a series dipping into maritime history, each book a different generation of the same family, but in the event I have decided that Kite is too interesting a guy to abandon so soon. I intend therefore to write the next novel—which has to be delivered before next summer—about Kite during the American Revolution. I don't think he's going to spend too much time involved with the damned Yankees, because for the Brits the war became a global conflict.

However, as readers of The Guineaman will quickly realise, Kite's fate and fortune are inextricably bound up with America because, instead of being a naval officer, Kite is a commercial merchant mariner. In the broadest conceptual sense the new series will be about merchant seafaring, rather than the purely naval variety, which currently saturates the market. I hope it will be no less exciting and the rivalry and inter-dependence of American and British commercial shipping is a fascinating story with lots of potential and trans-Atlantic interest. So, there we are. The title refers in part to Kite, but also to his first ship, for both those involved in slaving and their ships, bore this colloquial name. Quite what he will be doing in the second in the series is currently a matter of furious debate. We shall have to see...

GJ What can you add about The Guineaman and the series?
RW Kite is the son of an apothecary in England's Lake District (Cumbria) and due to his involvement with a local farmer's daughter, finds he has to run for his life and ship out of Liverpool in a slaver. He has to start a new life under entirely false pretences, in a trade he finds abhorrent but which he is circumstantially thrust deeply into. What happens to him aboard the Enterprize, marks him for life, but his subsequent adventures in the West Indies coincide with the Seven Years War and the taking of Guadeloupe. These events transform him from a fugitive to a wealthy young man with a black mistress, great prospects and a ship or two, but how and why I am not prepared to reveal! How far along is your thinking for the series? As a broad concept, with certain historical events providing the main springs for the stories, my planning is completed. In detail the situation is far more fluid. By taking several generations of the same family one has far greater latitude than concentrating on the life-span of a single individual and my broad intention is to show the maritime history of Britain and the United States as part of the same story. We'll see how it goes.

GJ Do you find it difficult to move back and forth between writing historical fiction and history?
RW No, not really. I'm a compulsive. I have to work and my work is now writing. Moving between the constraints of historical fact and the sheer drudgery of research, to the tremendous creative freedom of writing a story, is often a great relief. On the other hand, novel-writing is exhausting and draining. Inventiveness is not inexhaustible and imagination needs topping up, so that writing within the limitations of fact seems to offer a pleasant respite. When I feel jaded, the one activity offsets the disadvantages of the other and acts as a kick-start to its partner.

GJ What can your readers look forward to in 2000?
RW Well fortunately a bit of both history and fiction. The Guineaman is available now, with the second title due out before the end of 2000. I shall also be beginning a new novel some time during the year, though this is under wraps at the moment and it certainly won't be published for some time.

My new history book, Malta Convoys, has a self-explanatory title. American readers might consider this British naval campaign rather an irrelevance—Fleet Admiral King certainly did—but the fact that it took place at all is a remarkable story and one in which the U.S. Navy played a crucial role. My main purpose in writing it was to capture the participation of merchant, as much as naval ships and seamen, in an area of history which we are in danger of losing on both sides of the Atlantic as our merchant fleets vanish under market pressures. Malta Convoys is to be published in London by John Murray Ltd in April. There is also another project which will, I think be published before end of the year, though we don't know yet quite when. This will be entitled The Sea Warriors and is the remarkable story of the greatest fighting captains in the age of Nelson. Unfortunately Nelson dominates the period and over-shadows two remarkable generations of naval-commanders. This book is currently on the stocks.

GJ Are there any more Second World War projects on the horizon after Malta Convoys?
RW Well yes, one and the horizon is rather distant. I am currently working on a synopsis but at this stage it would be foolish to say more. The long term objective is to complement Arctic Convoys and Malta Convoys with a third volume.

GJ You spend a fair amount of time sailing your cutter, Andromeda. What is the vessel's history?
RW I get afloat as often as I can and clearly the amount of time I can escape from my desk depends upon the pressure of my writing. Andromeda was built in 1966, of mahogany on oak. The well-known naval architect and nautical author John Leather, who lives not far from me, designed what he called a bawley yacht. John is a noted authority on gaff rig and his bawley yacht is an attractive craft, intended for modest but comfortable cruising on the east coast of England, but quite capable of crossing the North Sea to The Netherlands. Three were built and two are known to me. The third, which was once owned by the actor Leo McKern is now, I think, in the Mediterranean. Andromeda is a hybrid of John's design (he pleasantly disowns her!) with an extended cruising ability, fuller accommodation a taller rig (she sets a jib headed topsail on a long pole mast whereas her half-sisters all have shorter masts and jack-yard topsails). She is rated at 5 tonnes Thames measurement and in a good blow exceeds her theoretical hull speed by three knots. Having said that she is no flyer, but is a comfortable cruiser, with a powerful auxiliary engine and ideal for my purposes as I get older. She has had a relatively undistinguished history. Her first owner was an ex-Union Castle officer who, as an apprentice in WW2, was torpedoed. He therefore appreciated a boat with good sea-keeping qualities when he modified John's basic design and ordered the hull from a builder on the River Crouch. I am still in touch with him. He kept her on the home coast, but several subsequent owners took her abroad, as I have done, visiting French, Belgian and Dutch ports. She has cruised extensively in The Netherlands, where the Dutch like traditional boats and we always attract some interest. This is very useful when entering a small, over-crowded Dutch port in the evening, for someone will always offer a berth alongside their own grp monster! I modified the original rig, increasing the size of the mainsail and working jib. All Andromeda's sails are tan, except the jib which is white, as tradition demands. Although I am a member of the Cruising Association and the Old Gaffers' Association, I generally cruise under the burgee of the Seven Seas Club. This is a rather Pickwickian organisation of ex-seafarers, (merchant and naval men, Royal Marines and even River Policemen!), yachtsmen, ship-brokers and under-writers who dine in London once a month during the autumn and winter. We raise money for marine related charities, mostly connected with sail-training, provide bursaries for disadvantaged children. A group of beneficiaries recently sponsored came from Chernobyl.

GJ What do you enjoy most about sailing and being at sea?
RW Well, it's where I belong; it's what I know and what I do. Long before I went to sea in pursuit of a living, I wanted a modest cruising yacht, but sailing Andromeda is more than just fulfilling a boyhood ambition. A great deal of what goes on in the world makes me pretty angry and I find the ordinary challenges of sailing are necessary to keep a sense of perspective and stave off a general rage. Moreover, in the affluent west, we are cushioned against much of life's uncertainties and I don't think this is good for us. I'm not into bungee jumping, but sailing is a traditional challenge that suits me personally. One can turn it from pure self-indulgence by extending it to others who like it, but for one reason or another don't own their own boat. Above all, of course, sailing provides me with a link to my roots and acts as an inspiration for my stories. One can think a lot at sea—if you leave the mobile telephone ashore.

Douglas Reeman/
Alexander Kent
Interview by George Jepson
Tall Ships Books

Douglas Reeman is in his fifth decade of writing about the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. Under the pen name Alexander Kent, he is the author of the Richard Bolitho novels, set during the Napoleonic Wars. He writes his twentieth-century naval fiction as Douglas Reeman.

His latest novel in the Blackwood Family Royal Marines Saga, Dust on the Sea, has been published this month in the United Kingdom. The newest Alexander Kent Bolitho novel, Relentless Pursuit , was just released in hardback in October 2001. Reeman recently took time to answer questions about his career.

Q: How do you determine the subject matter for each succeeding Douglas Reeman novel? Does it become more difficult after thirty-plus books?
DR: Sometimes it's a single event or a single person. And if it's a sea story it can be the ship herself. It doesn't happen very often that way, but it has happened. Yes, it does become more difficult after thirty plus books, because I've become more demanding—the need to learn more about the characters, and thinking for the characters—whereas in the early books I just wrote what they said and did.

Q: Is it difficult to switch your thinking from the nineteenth century Royal Navy of Richard Bolitho and Adam Bolitho to that of the Second World War?
DR: They're completely different. Methods of warfare, methods of communication. In the days of sail all the main characters are visible to the author at any one time; the author must know what they can see and hear and how they communicate with one another. And, above all, how the ship "works"—set against the elements, wind, tide, time, and distance. And the men, of course, who from choice or enforcement were welded together for the sole purpose of fighting the ship.

In more modern times characters tend to be separated, in "little metal boxes," like the bridge, the engine room, the gunnery positions, and the sailor's world, his mess deck, so that some inevitably become more important and more prominent in the story than others: what they do, who they are, or perhaps even something very personal, like their home lives.

Q: Are your characters drawn from people you knew and served with in the Royal Navy?
DR: If a character offers himself, or herself, I will take them. Over the years, probably without knowing it, I may have used several people I've met or served with at sea. Others have simply walked into my life and my brain without comment, Richard Bolitho being the major example. He found me . . . he didn't find me, he came to me. I never felt that I created him. I admit that I borrowed his name (which is pronounced Bo-LYE-tho, by the way) from a living person. Although Bolitho is a fairly common name in certain parts of southern Cornwall, I met him in Jersey, in the Channel Islands. I had just sailed my boat from England—this must have been in the early '60s, because I was already an established writer—and I was looking for a suitable mooring in Gorey harbour in the face of a fast-falling tide (it drops about eleven feet— enough!) when this man suddenly appeared aboard another boat. He was a seafaring type, a yachtsman—he was actually a soldier. "Bluff," that is the word I would use. Anyway, to speed things up, actually I think it was to protect his own boat, he took my lines. He was living in Jersey at the time, although he was in fact a Cornishman, and he wanted to hear all the news from England . . . offered to buy me a drink, and said by way of introduction, "By the way, my name's Bolitho, Captain Richard Bolitho." Years later, my then American publisher, Walter J. Minton, who knew how keen I was to write about a period of history very dear to me, said, "Have you got a name for this guy?" And it came to me straight away, as if somebody else had spoken. "Captain Richard Bolitho." I never met Richard Bolitho again in person, but I wrote to him and told him I was using his name. He was delighted.

Q: From where do you draw your combat actions in the Reeman novels?
DR: It depends on what the battle's about. I have witnessed most of the things I write about, not the actual deeds, but various sorts of engagements. Action at close quarters, in motor torpedo boats and destroyers, as well as taking part in three major invasions. I know how men, and women, react under fire, what holds people together, and what makes them crack—I've seen it all. It depends on the viewpoint of the person in his metal box: what he sees, what he's required to do, like the laying of guns or the firing of a broadside or flying off an aircraft carrier or dropping depth charges, or a simple act of humanity like picking up half-drowned sailors. It should be mentioned that with big ships, as in Battlecruiser, the enemy was never in sight. The range was usually twelve miles, sometimes more.

Q: What was the genesis of the Blackwood stories? Will there be more in the future?
DR: I was asked to be the guest of honour of the Royal Marines for a Trafalgar Night dinner in 1979 at the Commando Training Centre at Lympstone. And this was a great honour for me as the Royal Marines do not usually celebrate Trafalgar. On this occasion, when I arrived, they were flying the White Ensign, just for me, something else they do not usually do. It was a very moving occasion and at the end of the dinner when I stood up to make my speech I was very conscious of the change of atmosphere around me . . . the scarlet dinner jackets, the candlelight, the mess silver on the tables, and the officer's faces, which would not have been out of place at St. Vincent or Trafalgar. And I knew then that I had to write about the Corps, and when I sat down I said as much to the Colonel. He said, "Just ask for anything you need," and that was how it was. The first Blackwood book, Badge of Glory, was published in 1982. The next one, set during the Boxer Rebellion, was The First to Land. The third, and the next generation, finds the Marines at the Dardanelles and in Flanders, and is called The Horizon, and the fourth, Dust on the Sea, will be published in June. Yes, there will be more.

Q: Please describe the process you go through to develop a Reeman novel?
DR: I always have about three stories lined up in my mind. With Battlecruiser it was the ship that inspired the story, the nature of the ship and its fatal flaw. That happened earlier in a book called HMS Saracen, and now as Kim and I go around signing sessions and meet people in various parts of the world, I'm still told that it was a favourite book—it's a favourite of mine, too, because of the ship. In some cases the plot is sparked off by some aspect of something I've done. My very first book, A Prayer for the Ship, was autobiographical, as was a good deal of another one I wrote which is set as the war ends in Germany, The White Guns. As for research, I must have known this was going to happen because I seem never to have thrown anything away! Over the years I've hoarded a lot of stuff I should have given back or destroyed, some of it marked "Confidential." It's all irreplaceable.

As for the actual writing, I'm not a forenoon person. I do the business side of things in the morning and write in the afternoon. At the end of the day Kim and I read our work to each other. The next day before I start work I read over what I've done and correct it or alter it. And yes, I use a typewriter. I don't have a word processor or a computer, and I don't intend to get one.

Q: What does the future hold for the Reeman novels? Are there other naval or maritime topics you would like to explore?
DR: As I said, I have at least three stories right now waiting to be told as Reeman, and the next Kent is already taking shape in my mind. There's a Reeman in process right now. It should be noted that at least ten of my Reeman books are not set during World War II at all, although I tend to be catalogued as a writer of that period.

Q: Has any particular aspect of your naval service impacted your writing?
DR: The significant thing here is that none of us knew we were going to be writers. We just wanted to be in the navy, and I joined when I was sixteen. I had no idea that the experience was going to help me in the future. It came to me after I had become a writer that the "Old Pals' Act," so to speak, would open many doors which otherwise would remain closed. It's like being in school: if you ask, they say no. So you don't ask. It's particularly true of the navy, and I imagine the army is the same.

I was able to go aboard a nuclear submarine when they were absolutely out of bounds, simply because I was then a naval reservist and I knew someone, and the officers knew what I was doing, they were all in it together. It was a conspiracy . . . but they would have been in dead trouble if they had been found out. Action in MTBs significantly impacted my writing as Alexander Kent because I learned all about what it was like to fight a close action in a small craft with a lot of wood splinters flying around (although we were a lot faster than a 74!) And the other aspect was living in such close quarters with many other men, practically getting out of the same bed—you knew about other people's habits and their families and their troubles—and the war was all on the outside. You and your friends were the only ones who mattered. And we were all for it. I didn't have a particularly easy war, but I wouldn't have missed for the world.

James Nelson
Interview by George Jepson
Tall Ships Books

It was a pleasant summer afternoon when I telephoned Jim Nelson to ask when his Isaac Biddlecomb novel, Lords of the Ocean, would be available. Not surprisingly, Jim was out with his family, enjoying the Maine sunshine, but he soon returned my call.

"Out in the garden, eh?" I chuckled.

"Actually", he replied, "we were doing the quintessential Maine summer thing—picking blueberries. My daughter, who is three-and-a-half, lasted all of three and a half minutes."

The exchange was typical of this friendly bear of a man, whose Revolution at Sea Saga is gaining momentum book by book. And this month, Lords of the Ocean appears in hardcover.

Almost a year ago, Jim wrote us a note in which he said, "I haven't sold enough books, yet, not to be humble." But even as his writing gains greater acclaim, it is difficult to imagine him being anything other than a family man, tucked away in rural Maine, happy to be writing about the sea, ships and sailors.

Earlier last year, with publication of Lords of the Ocean on the horizon, he responded to a few questions from Tall Ships Books:

GJ How did you develop your interest in the sea?
JN I honestly don't know. No one in my family sails. The history of my line of Nelsons in America goes back to the turn of the century, and they are all farmers and civil engineers and teachers. But ever since I was a kid, I loved ships and the sea. But of course my Swedish heritage is very closely linked to the sea, so that would argue for its being a genetic disorder.

GJ What motivated you to begin writing in the first place?
JN When I graduated from film school I started writing screenplays, because I was in Los Angeles and that is what you do if you live in LA. You write screenplays. I think it is a city ordinance. I wrote badly and achieved spectacular failure. But the writing bug was planted, or perhaps I should say germinated. It was planted reading Hornblower over and over again as a kid. I read a biography of Ernest Hemingway by Carlos Baker which really impressed me and that became a great motivator. It all coalesced when I was a little older (you need a certain maturity to be a writer, I believe). Finally it came together while working on the sail training vessel Rose and thinking I have learned so much about sailing ships over all these years, there has to be a better way to make a living with that knowledge than actually doing it!

GJ Have any particular writers influenced your work?
JN C. S. Forester, of course. He has taken a lot of criticism in the wake of Patrick O'Brian¯s admittedly superior prose style, but Forester did invent the genre, after all, at least as far as the series goes. Hemingway, I think, has had an influence on all American writers. Patrick O'Brian has had an influence on my prose style though I have to force myself not to try and write like him. I don't like to read O'Brian's books while writing my own because it is too easy for me to slip into an imitation (albeit a poor one) of his voice.

GJ What does the future hold for Isaac Biddlecomb and the Revolution at Sea Saga after Lords of the Ocean?
JN Lords of the Ocean is a big book for Isaac, his first hard-cover. There will definitely be one more after that, All the Brave Fellows, due out in August, 2000, and that sees Isaac involved in the defense of the Delaware River as the British fleet pushes up to join Howe in Philadelphia in 1777.This summer we will talk with Pocket Books about continuing on. I am not certain what exactly he will be up to. I will say this, when Dennis Lyle, the artist who does the covers, wrote to the art department at Pocket concerning the triptych for the next three he wrote, "I don't know what Books 4 and 5 are about, but I assume they involve British ships shooting at our heroes." There is little I can add to that.

GJ What other writing projects are you currently working on?
JN Top secret, need to know basis only. I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you and the thousands of people who log on to your site and the logistics of that would be a nightmare. But rest assured, you will be briefed.

GJ What do you do for relaxation (between children, writing, etc.)?
JN Fall down.

GJ Do you find time to sail for pleasure?
JN I am, alas, between boats right now. We have just bought a house and I am doing a lot of renovations. My wife is planning a big garden so I will be roped into rototilling and such. We are also planning on having chickens and sheep, so there is fencing, coops to build—oh my god, I am becoming a farmer! Ahhhh! Get me to salt water! Actually, I do try and get out with the Rose for a week or so every year, and we will be getting a boat once the kids are a bit bigger, but right now it is mostly landlocked stuff. Fortunately, I can walk down to the ocean from my home, and we live at the tip of one of the ubiquitous Maine peninsulas, so I am literally surrounded by the sea. My road even appears on the NOAA chart, which I consider a good thing. (NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, the agency that, among other things, creates the charts for mariners of US waters, for those of you in Iowa.)

GJ What else in the nautical/naval genre or other genres would you like to explore?
JN I'm a ways from anything else right now, but I would like to write contemporary fiction. It would be such a pleasure to know that I cannot, by definition, write anything anachronistic!