IMAGE
Julian Stockwin
Softback
Book Reviews
141106
This second story in the Kydd and Renzi series is a change of pace. Another compulsive page turner. The first story saw Kydd press ganged and taken aboard the "Royal Billy" a line of battle ship. At the end of that story, Kydd and Renzi were transferred to a new ship together with their mess mates as a group of Able Seamen, an unexpected and welcome addition to the frigate's crew, depleted by detailing crew members to prize duty. This second book develops the characters and their relationships against a well-paced account of the voyages of the "Artemis". Where the "Royal Billy" was a solid floating gun battery intended to closely engage similar vessels in set piece Fleet actions, "Artemis" is a greyhound of the seas, a commerce raider and soloist. Frigates combined speed, manoeuvrability and firepower. They required nimble sailors and provided close comradeship without the ceremony and formality of a line of battleship. If this was not to be change enough, Kydd and Renzi are both rated Petty Officers making the enormous move from a seaman's mess to a Petty Officer's mess where they become comrades of men who had previously been their task masters. Stockwin paints a full colour picture of naval life and the new environment of the frigate. His careful research, basing this book on the stories of real ships and sailors, pays off and the reader is engaged in the world of Kydd and Renzi. The story is in four main parts, each flowing naturally from the tale before. The first part is triumphal, the elevation to Petty Officer in a most famous frigate and its triumph over a French warship of similar strength. In this tale, Stockwin demonstrates a British tradition of entering wars ill prepared against a powerful and ruthless enemy, where defeats are more common than victories. The army is unable to defeat the enemy and national morale is lifted by the gladiatorial triumph of the Royal Navy in a victory that will not of itself change the war but which produces hope for eventual success and defeat of an enemy. "Artemis" fights an engagement that is the counterpart to the action almost a century and a half later when three small British cruisers took on the considerably more powerful German pocket battleship Graf Spee and won, demonstrating that the enemy could be beaten. This triumph for our two heroes, their shipmates, their ship and for the Royal Navy is nicely balanced by a second tale where Kydd comes close to severing his association with the sea and where Renzi begins a tentative relationship with Kydd's sister Cecilia. The pace and scene changes yet again as Kydd and Renzi return to "Artemis". One of Stockwin's characteristics as an author is to introduce twists and turns, changing pace, but logical progression. The story is unpredictable to the end when it can then be seen how the tales that make up the book fit well together and also follow on from the previous book, giving a tempting glimpse of the volume that is to follow. In the third tale, "Artemis" is bound for the mysteries of China. This produces a rare view of the foundations of Victorian trade and British dominance. It also provides the platform for an interesting development in the characters of Kydd and Renzi and the symbiotic inter play between them, a major personal challenge for Kydd and a natural lead into the final part of the book. This forth part is built around scientific discovery, encounters with South Sea cannibals, a major point in Kydd's sailing career, the fearsome Cape Horn, the terror of fever aboard and then a final disaster from which our heroes escape by the skin of their teeth into an uncertain future. As the reader follows an involving story a great deal of information is absorbed. For many, this will create a lifelong interest in the Royal Navy of the epic days of sail. Coming into the subject with Stockwin's Kydd and Renzi saga is a very good entry point to a period that has generated so many books of fact and fiction. Perhaps what makes this period of British history so addictive for readers around the world, and Stockwin is translated into many languages, is that the Navy of Nelson stands at the cross roads of British naval evolution. In the time of Kydd and Renzi, the Royal Navy took volunteers from many nations, including those they fought, and topped up by employing press gangs that were little different from any other slavers or crimpers. Wealth and social rank could buy apprenticeship as a Midshipman and could buy influence, as Stockwin shows in this book, but the Royal Navy had no central training college. Training was on-the-job for officer and seaman alike. Those who caught the attention of their superiors could advance rapidly from whichever point they entered the Service. Midshipman who failed to perform well could remain in their junior rank for many years until sickness or enemy action removed them from the lists. Each ship developed its own character from its Captain, who was Master Before God, ruling his seagoing kingdom wisely or poorly. In the days before telecommunications, a ship could sail in peace to find itself at war during the voyage and each Captain, particularly of a detached frigate, enjoyed enormous responsibility and almost complete autonomy. Stockwin has captured this reality well and promises to develop the background along with his fictional characters as they live through tumultuous times.
R1382
Fiction
0-340-79476-3
http://tinyurl.com/
Artemis
440
£6.99
Hodder and Stoughton