====================================== S T O P - P R E S S +New Year Contest for Limited Edition Print from the KYDD COLLECTION+ ====================================== "THE BOSUN'S CHRONICLE" --- emailed to Shipmates around the world each month --- VOL. 3, ISSUE 1, January 2003 Avast there - and welcome aboard from the Bosun of the Thomas Kydd Shipmates' Network! In response to your suggestions over the last twelve months we've revised the format of "The Bosun's Chronicle" - hope you enjoy the new features. Please keep the emails coming; we value all your comments. Do look at the updated website, too! There's additional pics in the Album, a new-look Home Page and a number of other changes. 1) NEWS AND VIEWS 2) ASK JULIAN 3) RECOMMENDED READING 4) SALTY SAYINGS 5) WHO'S WHO 6) FEATURE 7) CONTEST ===================== 1) NEWS AND VIEWS --- Publishing happenings, Reviews, Shipmates Ahoy --- + JAPANESE RIGHTS Following the popularity of their translated edition of KYDD, the Japanese publisher Hayakawa has purchased Japanese language rights for ARTEMIS. + SHIPMATES AHOY! Seventeen year old Emily Crabb, who lives in Hythe in Kent (Julian knows the coastal town well, having lived there as a boy) recently discovered KYDD among her father's books. It was Geoff Hunt's striking cover that caught her eye. Emily says that she is fascinated by the sea and particularly likes all the technicalities described in Julian's books. In her spare time Emily visits historic ships like "Victory" and "The Grand Turk", as well as Portsmouth and Chatham dockyards. On the other side of the Atlantic, Kevin Gossett, a Morning Radio Host in Chicago, was given a copy of KYDD as a birthday present from his wife and is now a great fan of the series. Kevin loves stories of the sea, but admits he is the landlubber of the family! His wife is from a seafaring family of Scots of the East Coast variety and her family still has a house on the North Sea in Anstruther/Cellardyke that she and Kevin visit on a regular basis. + ADVANCE SHIPMATE REVIEWs OF SEAFLOWER Several months ago we ran a special contest to select six Shipmate Reviewers who would be given the opportunity to read an Advance Copy of SEAFLOWER. Here's what they had to say about the book: "In my opinion it is the best of Julian's books. From the opening scenes of the court of inquiry into the loss of HMS Artemis to the final scenes aboard Seaflower - the book just reaches out and grabs the reader and doesn't let go. My favourite sequence in this book is the section with HMS Trajan facing a Caribbean hurricane." - Sheldon Levy USN RET. "SEAFLOWER is a fast moving, riveting yarn from beginning to end - full of intrigue, twists and turns, plus the hardships, camaraderie and the exhilaration of fast chases in a little cutter around the Caribbean." - Mary Goose "Julian Stockwin's expertise as both a layman's historian and a masterful storyteller can only leave readers clinging to each page as a topman to the yard arms. I found myself savouring the experience of the novel while dreading its imminent end. Set royals, weigh anchor and pick up a copy, this will be the first great read of '03." - Todd Wardwell "SEAFLOWER is fantastic. The story flowed with ease from one situation to another and all the while our understanding of Kydd's character continues to grow. I loved chapter five about the hurricane; it's every bit as exciting as any naval battle. Bravo on another great novel!" - Graham Davenport "Those readers familiar with the earlier exploits of Thomas Kydd will not be disappointed with SEAFLOWER. Julian Stockwin's writing style blends the social history of the period wonderfully with the hazards of seafaring and war. SEAFLOWER can be equally enjoyed on its own or read as part of the series. And if reading SEAFLOWER represents the reader's first exposure to Thomas Kydd, I can pay no bigger compliment to Stockwin's writing than to hazard that such readers will be beating a hasty path to their bookshop to purchase the earlier books in the series." - Stephen Collins "This instalment was even better than its predecessors. The action is non-stop and it has the hard life of being a sailor in the 18th century together with romantic episodes, sea battles, prizes . all rolled up into a thoroughly enjoyable adventure. Please send along another cracking adventure for Thomas and Nicholas soon!" - Graham Mills The response to the Shipmate Reviewers Contest has been fantastic - and another six reviewers will win the chance later this year to review MUTINY. ==================== 2) ASK JULIAN --- A Forum for Shipmates' questions --- Steve from Iowa, USA, wants to know: "I've often wondered what is the difference between rope and cable. Can you enlighten me?" Julian replies: "I should perhaps say something about hawsers, first. The difference between a hawser and a cable is nothing to do with its length, but the way it is laid up. A hawser-laid rope is laid up right-handed, the strands are twisted so that if you look at the hawser vertically, the strands go up to the right (`with the sun', as sailors say). Cable laid, the strands go up to the left. Rope is anything over 1 inch in circumference; anything less is twine, yarn, marline etc. The biggest rope I know is the 24-inch anchor cable of `Victory'. Rope that is tarred is `standing rigging'; untarred rope is `running rigging' for handling the sails. If you are talking about `a cable', you are talking about cable-laid rope. `The cable' means a specific object like an anchor cable." Email your questions to . Please write ASK JULIAN in the subject line. There's a signed set of the Kydd series postcards - KYDD, ARTEMIS and SEAFLOWER - for every published question. ==================== 3) RECOMMENDED READING --- Books, magazines and journals of the sea --- + "Heart of Oak - A sailor's Life in Nelson's Navy" by James P McGuane. ISBN 0-393-04749-0. Published by W W Norton, US$49.95 A lovingly compiled collection of photographs of artefacts from the world of the eighteenth century seaman. From tar-ladles and snuff-boxes to sailmaker's palms and carronades. McGuane visited English museums and gained access to private collections to record this visual essay that provides an extraordinary window onto everyday life in Nelson's navy. ==================== 4) SALTY SAYINGS --- What today's English owes to Jack Tar --- SON OF A GUN Today, we use this phrase to refer to someone who is a bit of a rough diamond, but a good guy nevertheless - or, interjectionally, to express surprise or disappointment. The origins of this phrase are definitely salty. In Kydd's day, "wives" of seamen were allowed on board in harbour, and occasionally at sea. As the gangways had to be kept clear, the only place where women in labour could give birth was in the spaces between the guns on the gundeck. Thus a male child born on board was known as "a son of a gun"; collectively they became "sons of the sea" - "Begotten in the galley and born under a gun Every hair a rope yarn, every tooth a marline spike Every finger a fishhook and his blood right good Stockholm tar" ==================== 5) WHO'S WHO --- Bio details of the characters in the series --- Ned "the Songbird" Doud We first meet Doud, "a wiry, perky young man" in KYDD, when it's his turn to collect the evening meal of pease pudding and Irish Horse. Edward Doud was of Kydd's age, but of a very different origin. Born at Pegwell in Kent, into a fisherman's family, he was out in a spritsail bawley, stowboating whelk and whitebait before he could walk. His songster's gift he ascribed to his father who would keep his large family entertained in the whitewashed stone cottage during endless winter easterlies by singing age-old songs of the country and the sea. With the Downs and its busy anchorage within sight it was to be expected that young Ned would find his calling on the sea and so it proved: at the age of 12 he went to sea in a timber trader to the Baltic, and did well, but was cast away in the Kattegat in the great storms of 1792. He then signed on for a voyage to the West Indies, but at Madeira was pressed into the Navy at the outset of war by the homeward bound "Duke William" and rated able seaman. Do you have a favourite character you'd like more information about? Just email the Bosun at the usual address, marked "WHO'S WHO". ==================== 6) FEATURE JULIAN'S 18TH CENTURY ARTEFACTS Julian was especially pleased to select the Recommended Reading this month as he writes in a small study surrounded by his own special collection of tangible links to the Great Age of Fighting Sail. He can reach and touch - and in some cases, smell - a world of 200 years ago. Many of the artefacts he has collected over the years were recovered from the wreck of HMS Invincible, a 74-gun ship-of-the-line sunk in the English Channel in 1758. Julian was recently interviewed by the online magazine Bowsprit, the monthly magazine of TallShips Books, about his American tour and among the questions was: "During your book signings and talks you display several naval artefacts from your collection. What is the history behind these pieces?" Here's what he said: + Sea Service Cutlass "My sea service cutlass receives quite a bit of attention. The cutlass was the chief weapon used for boarding enemy ships, boat actions (cutting out), and repelling boarders. The one in my collection was issued to a man-o'-war in the year of Trafalgar, 1805, and was used by seamen serving in His Majesty's Navy at that time. It must have been once bright with enemy blood. Little nicks on the cutting edge have been ground away - a testimony to the fact that this cutlass was certainly used in combat." + Gun Tackle Block "This 10-inch gun tackle block was one of the blocks each side of a chest-high 32 pounder cannon, the standard big gun of a line-of-battle ship. Men hauled on the tackle to run out the cannon which weighed three tons and had to be run out again after every broadside. These cannon could send a cannon ball as big as a man's head through three feet of solid oak at a distance of a mile. The sheaves in the block are hewn by hand from lignum vitae, an iron-hard Caribbean wood." + Tarred cable "As it is tarred, this eight-inch cable is standing rigging, and was maybe used for the fore-shrouds. It still reeks of 200 years of tar and the sea, and is one of the most evocative items in my collection. A ship-o'-the-line needed vast quantities of rope and cable, stretched end to end they would extend to over 20 miles!" + Seaman's Tankard "This was made by a modern cooper using eighteenth century timber to the exact specification of an ancient tankard of the times. Seamen would have drunk small beer in this. When the beer had run out after some time at sea, a half pint of rum would be issued each day." + The Times "Another special item in my collection is the Times newspaper, printed the very day that Tom Kydd was press-ganged, Friday 8 February 1793." You can read the article in full . =================== 7) CONTEST We are again offering a fabulous prize of a signed limited edition print from "The Kydd Collection" by Geoff Hunt RSMA. Geoff has been specially commissioned to produce original oil paintings for all the covers of the series. The prize, "Coming Aboard HMS Duke William", may be viewed at . Drawing inspiration from the first few pages of Julian's book this is one of Geoff's most atmospheric images of fighting sail. It shows vessels at anchor in the Thames Estuary at the Fleet anchorage of the Great Nore. The changeable light of January sparkles through clouds and over the sea - and there is a real sense of enormity of being alongside these huge weapons of war. Here's the question: In Geoff Hunt's limited edition print "HMS ARTEMIS" what is the location of the ship? Deadline for entries: February 28 Mark your emails "PRINT CONTEST" ================== Happy New Year! Yours aye, THE BOSUN ++ Back issues of the newsletter are now downloadable from the website++