His entry begins:
These days nearly all my reading is non-fiction and work-related, that is, some aspect of the great age of fighting sail. When I do get some down time, so to speak, I particularly enjoy memoirs of merchant mariners who served before the time of the ‘box-boats’. In their days, before the shipping revolution brought about by containerisation, cargo handling was a very labour intensive – and skilled – business. Also, because cargo needed to be hoisted out, load by load, a ship could be weeks in port (modern container ships turn around in hours only). This meant that much of the life of these pre-box boat sailors would be familiar to Kydd. With time to kill, the crew went on the rantan ashore in foreign ports, often returning somewhat the worse for wear. It was still the age of natural fibre so there was a need for skilled splicing and old-fashioned seamanship. Modern ships have polypropylene or wire ropes that are never spliced but metal moulded together. And before the era of satellite communications, once in Neptune’s realm only the radio operator knew what was going on beyond the world of their ship. It made for a close-knit community.About To the Eastern Seas, from the publisher:
One such book I enjoyed recently is Under a Yellow Sky is a colourful memoir from Simon Hall who went to sea at a time when the British fleet was still one of the greatest in the world and the Red Ensign a common sight in almost every large port. He writes of...[read on]
With Bonaparte held to a stalemate in Europe, the race to empire is now resumed. Britain's ambitions turn to the Spice Islands, the DutchVisit Julian Stockwin's website.East Indies, where Admiral Pellew has been sent to confront the enemy's vastly rich holdings in these tropical islands. Captain Sir Thomas Kydd joins reinforcements to snatch these for the British Crown.
The two colonial masters of India and the East Indies face each other in mortal striving for the region - there can be only one victor to hold all the spoils. The colonial genius, Stamford Raffles, believes Britain should strike at the very centre of Dutch spice production, the Moluccas, rather than the fortresses one by one but is fiercely opposed. Kydd, allying himself to this cause, conspires to lead a tiny force to a triumphant conclusion - however the Dutch, stung by this loss, claim vengeance from the French. A battle for Java and an empire in the East stretches Kydd and Tyger's company to their very limits.
Writers Read: Julian Stockwin.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
