R.L.'s Friend Comments

Mark your calendars for Feb. 26, 2022, if you're a member of the NMHS.
The NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY PRESENTS:
The Abalone Ukulele: A Tale of Far Eastern Intrigue
Zoom Seminar with Author CAPT R.L. Crossland, USN (Ret.)
Saturday, 26 February 2022: Welcome & Lecture at 11:00 AM ET
Join us for a presentation with author CAPT R.L. Crossland, USN (Ret.), as he discusses his book The Abalone Ukulele: A Tale of Far Eastern Intrigue, a fictional account of the Asiatic Fleet’s involvement in the theft of a shipment of Japanese gold ingots destined for a Japanese Bank in Shanghai. Set in May 1913, the book tells the story of four cultures that are about to collide: China, Korea, Japan, and the US—and the point of collision centers on the theft of three tons of Japanese gold ingots meant to undermine an already collapsing China.
It is a tale that brings to life a sprawling epic of greed, gold, and redemption, and wends through the outskirts of Peking to the Yukon River; from the San Francisco waterfront to a naval landing party isolated on a Woosung battlefield; from ships of the US Asiatic Fleet moored on Battleship Row to a junk on the Yangtze; and from the Korean gold mines of Unsan to a coaling quay in Shanghai. Soon a foreign intelligence service, a revolutionary army, and two Chinese triads converge on a nation’s ransom in gold.
The tale revisits the chaos that was Shanghai in 1913, with the competing military factions vying for power, the various criminal syndicates, the attempts to maintain law and order, and life in the bustling city itself. A haven for many bluejackets stationed on the USS Pluto, Madam Guan’s “Lesser Shanghai Indian Club and Garter Society” on the Lane of Lingering Joy is an important component in a quite complicated plot.
Don’t miss this fascinating seminar with CAPT R.L. Crossland, who served for thirty-five years, active and reserve, as a US Navy SEAL officer and with the Naval History Center (now Naval History and Heritage Command), and whose historical crime novel Jade Rooster was awarded the Admiral David Glasgow Farragut Award for naval literature in 2008.

Well, many of us write conscious of that ultimate deadline. Yet we have beards and know things. Those things we feel compelled to relate through fiction. Fiction entwined with the high stakes backdrop of history. Did I say that without indenting once? Whoa, I better get a cup of coffee.