Cindy Vallar's Blog - Posts Tagged "fiction"

Evening Gray Morning Red by Rick Spilman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Being the only man aboard who knows how to navigate, Thomas Larkin is voted by the crew to take them to Massachusetts after the captain dies at sea. It is a lonesome and frightening experience, but also a challenging one for a sixteen year old who began the journey as an able seaman. With the help of John Stevens, the bosun and a former privateer nearly twice his age, Thom gets them safely home. They are greeted by an undercurrent of dissatisfaction mixed with anger, for the Crown expects the colonies to pay for debts England accrued during the war. The presence of the British warship anchored in the harbor merely aggravates the tense situation in 1768.

While Thom and Johnny celebrate their homecoming, as well as new jobs on a forthcoming cruise, a press gang invades the tavern. Johnny escapes, but Thom is swept up and taken aboard HMS Romney. Feeling honor bound to save his young friend and knowing he can’t do so ashore, Johnny volunteers to join the Royal Navy. After taking the king’s shilling, he realizes escaping the ship is nigh impossible. To complicate the situation, Thom seethes with anger at being denied his freedom and Lieutenant William Dudingston is an arrogant man who hates colonials.

Patience and observation provide an opportunity to escape, but the arrival of a fleet of British warships intervenes and instead of getting away, the Romney weighs anchor and heads south for the Caribbean. Five arduous months fraught with challenges and dangers, both on deck and at sea, finally present a new chance to desert during a brewing tempest. Yet freedom fails to lift the haunting weight Thom has carried with him during the voyage. Sooner or later he will once again encounter his nemesis, Dudingston, of this he has no doubt.

Gripping nautical and historical fiction at its best, Evening Gray Morning Red is really two different books that span four years. The first half focuses on the pressing and escape, while the second presents a tantalizing depiction of the historical confrontation between the packet boat Hannah and the Royal Navy Schooner Gaspee off Namquid Point, Rhode Island – an event that united the colonies and was a precursor to the American Revolution. Spilman deftly brings the period, people, and situation to life in a way that a history can never achieve. While there are occasional misspellings, missing words, or too many words, none of these diminish the excitement, anger, or fomenting rebellion that marked the actual event. From first page to last, he whisks readers back in time to stand beside Thom and Johnny and experience all the emotions and intrigue they do. When the back cover closes, it’s like leaving good friends. You miss being with them, but the voyage was more exciting and fulfilling than you ever imagined. Highly recommended.




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The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower: A Biography of C.S. Forester's Famous Naval Hero by C. Northcote Parkinson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


When writers create stories and populate them with characters, it’s necessary to also flesh out details about who these people are and why they are as they appear in the books. This allows the authors to craft believable characters and readers to see them as “real” people. One such character who has stood the test of time is C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower, whose life unfolded over thirty years in twelve books. Forester pieced together Hornblower’s life from documentary evidence that the admiral’s descendant donated to the Royal Navy College, Greenwich in 1927.

In 1970, Parkinson discovered that three boxes of new material about Viscount Horatio Hornblower had come to light. The admiral had refused to permit these papers to be seen by others until 100 years after his death. The problem came in tracking down these containers since the companies to which they were originally entrusted had undergone change during that time lapse. What Parkinson eventually found were details that filled in gaps left by Forester’s accounts of Hornblower’s life. So much was new that Parkinson decided to write a biography about this legendary character.

A biography is defined as the history of a person’s life, and that person is someone who actually lived. For all intents and purposes, this book is an actual biography complete with appendices, correspondence, illustrations, a family tree, diagrams, and maps. It is also indexed and one illustration is of a title page of a book that Hornblower owned and signed. The twelve chapters chronicle his life from Schoolboy to Midshipman to Lieutenant all the way through his achieving Admiral of the Fleet. Much of the book focuses on his naval career, but there are also personal moments, such as his marriage to his landlady’s daughter, his children, and the loves of his life, one of whom was related to Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.

This book is a compelling read and a must for those who have enjoyed the Hornblower novels, or those unfamiliar with the first edition published in 1970, and those who know Horatio Hornblower only through the movies that illustrate his early exploits. You will not be disappointed and you will most likely learn new details about this fascinating, though fictional, admiral.


(This review first appeared at Pirates and Privateers: http://www.cindyvallar.com/Parkinson....)



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Charles Johnson's "General History of the Pyrates" and Global Commerce by Noel Chevalier

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


We tend to view pirates of the past through colored lenses tainted by the present. What we believe may or may not be true, not just because of this significant passage of time but also because an 18th-century author interlaced fact and fiction to create a bestseller – which was most likely his original intent. Today, this work is more often than not viewed as a primary historical document, one written by a contemporary of the pirates, and he may have been one or knew some personally. But what if this collection of “true-crime stories” is far more complex than that? Instead of writing a simple biography on pirates of the day, the author actually wished to provide commentary on commerce, ethics, the law, and politics in the early 1700s.

This is the premise behind Chevalier’s latest book. He makes it clear that when we talk about A General History of the Pyrates, we are not discussing a single edition. This bestseller was sold in different renderings over the course of four years and differences exist between them. Chevalier examines four editions – all published over a four-year period – rather than just using the first published book. These are the original version, published in May 1724 by Charles Rivington; a second edition published in August of that year by Thomas Warner; a third book in 1725 by the same publisher that added an additional pirate; and the 1728 version printed by Thomas Woodward, which consisted of two volumes.

While Chevalier clearly demonstrates that General History is actually a multi-layered book, he also delves into scholars’ attempts to resolve a mystery surrounding this book. For about three centuries, the true identity of its author, Captain Charles Johnson, has been guessed at but never positively pinpointed.

Although the title suggests that Johnson’s book is a history, it’s really a collection of biographies on pirates who lived during a short time span that has become known as the “golden age of piracy.” Those who read below the surface will find references to points of particular interest during the 1720s: colonialism, ethics, politics, society, and trade. According to Chevalier, “Johnson’s General History uses its pirate subject as mirrors of the age, ultimately suggesting that, odious as they are, pirates differ from better-placed criminals only in class, and in the hard punishments meted out to them that their betters almost always escaped.” (xii)

Trade, colonialism, and piracy are intricately entwined, for it's impossible to have one without the others. While the expansion of markets and products lead to greater wealth, this wealth comes at a cost because some trade relies on human trafficking and inhuman working conditions.

Johnson’s commentary may have been about the world in which he lived, but at least some of these observations can be associated with current situations. For example, Sir Robert Walpole was a political powerhouse whose dominance then has relevance to government today. Another similarity involves socioeconomic realities. Changing attitudes are equally relevant, for its easy for friends to become enemies and vice versa.

This volume – part of the Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850 series – is divided into two sections: “Monsters” and “Great Men” with an interlude that discusses social ethics of the 1720s. Pirates are not stick figures; they are multi-faceted beings just like any other human being. The “Monster” chapters show how General History pirates fit that persona. They threaten the traditional social order. They don’t conform to expectations. They live on the margins. This is why they are monsters who need to be prosecuted and eradicated. Chevalier selects several of Johnson’s pirates to demonstrate this: Blackbeard, Mary Read and Anne Bonny, and Edward Low.

The interlude explores the ethics of wealth and colonial expansion. It may seem odd, but pirates were essential to global commerce. There is ambiguity here because some colonists and merchants welcomed the trade pirates brought, whereas England saw them as interlopers. The latter must be punished; the former must conform. Chevalier focuses on several period publications and the aftermath of the South Sea Bubble. Piracy, however, is not a key subject in the interlude; what he discusses is pertinent to General History and how monsters can also be “Great Men.”

Just because the government or society sees pirates as monsters, they don’t necessarily see themselves that way. While similarities exist between merchants and pirates, it’s not okay for the latter to act like the former. Doing so threatens the social order and makes it difficult for respectable people to understand what “greatness” means. For example, Johnson’s pirates are shown as “intelligent, resourceful, capable leaders,” but in the blink of an eye, they are also portrayed as “violent and cruel.” (110) This ambiguity is illustrated with Bartholomew Roberts, whose piratical activities and captaincy Chevalier likens to a professional businessman. This section also looks at how England developed a proper manner for punishing pirates – one that was public and ritualistic.

To enrich the narrative there are illustrations and an appendix listing the various editions of General History. Endnotes, a bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and an index are included.

Chevalier mentions in his preface that he hopes to “open a fuller exploration of General History and its complexities.” (xii) He certainly achieves this, providing readers of Johnson’s book with new ways to examine the pirates within the framework of the society in which they operated. Instead of just seeing General History as an historical document, Chevalier shows that it has far greater depth and is an important example of period literature. As he phrases it, the book “is a study of the phenomenon of piracy as it has manifested itself in Britain between 1714 and 1724 – specifically, the years following the War of the Spanish Succession, the arrival of the Hanoverian monarchy, and the ascendancy of the Whig government.” (28-29) This is key because these and other events pertaining to global commerce impact how Johnson portrays the pirates in the various editions. Although a number of articles have been written about Johnson and General History, Chevalier is the first to examine the book in greater depth as a literary work. In doing so, he illuminates what readers may not understand and provides context to better enrich the reading experience. This allows us to see these pirates as Johnson saw them and to better understand where our ideas of piracy come from.

Even if studies of 18th-century literature aren’t your forte, Chevalier’s book is essential reading. Without it, your understanding of golden age pirates lacks depth because what you read and who they truly were are not and cannot be the same. Highly recommended.


(This review originally appeared at Pirates and Privateers: http://www.cindyvallar.com/Chevalier....)



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