All the Ships at Sea...

 Photo above by Beth Miller

by Mary Jo

It is not news that Britain is an island. Not just an island, but part of an archipelago, a wide flung collection of islands including Ireland, the Hebrides that are the wild western fringe of Scotland, Shetland and Orkney away to the north, the Scilly Isles scattered southwest from Cornwall, the yachting Isle of Wight to the south, and many more: there are two major islands, Great Britain and Ireland, some middling sized ones, and over 6000 smaller ones, some not much larger than rocks, but still… (Photo at left from Wikipedia by Jeff Schmaltz, Modis/NASA.)

 

The English Channel has been a giant protective moat that has kept Britain safe. My favorite quotes about that are the epigraph for my YA historical, Dark Destiny. When Napoleon was gathering a massive invasion fleet at Boulogne to invade England, he said, "Let us be masters of the Channel for six hours, and we are masters of the world."

This was countered by an understated comment in a letter to Parliament by Admiral Lord John Jervis, Earl of St. Vincent, when he was commander of the Channel Fleet during the Napoleonic wars. "I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea."

And Napoleon didn't. Deciding that invading Britain was not a good idea, he turned his attention to the east, eventually invading Russia, which turned out to be a really bad idea. (Hitler had a very similar experience 150 years later.)

But what stirred me to write this rather rambling missive was a realization of how often the sea and sailing have been part of my stories. In the second book I ever wrote, Lady of Fortune, (I swear this is the year I will get it polished and released in an e-edition! Really!) the hero is a Royal Navy captain invalided out of active duty.

In A Distant Magic, my Maltese born hero is a corsair captain of sorts, though he frees galley slaves rather than capturing them.

The final book of my Bride trilogy, The Bartered Bride,  (which will be released on February 8th, available for preorder now) features Gavin Elliott, a New England sea captain and trader, and a sizable section of the book is at sea returning from the East Indies, where he discovers a lady in dire need of rescuing. And not just any lady…

Not to mention that Hawkins, the hero of my 2018 book, Once a Scoundrel, is a sea captain. Hawkins had provided the transportation to get the hero to America and then home again in my 2017 book, Once a Rebel.

I think that's all the books I've written where the hero is a seafaring man (though maybe I forgot one <G>). But my characters travel a lot, so that's a lot of implied sea voyages, particularly to and from the Iberian Peninsula. In Nowhere Near Respectable, the hero's brother, Will Masterson, learns of his brother's apparent death while in Portugal and has to find a way to get onto the next packet home, which is leaving in three hours. And hero Mackenzie has a very scary encounter with the sea himself. 

In Sometimes a Rogue, the hero sails to Ireland to rescue the kidnapped heroine, and the two of them have a way too exciting voyage when they escape back to England.  In No Longer a Gentleman, the characters sneak across the Channel with smugglers because there's a war on.  In Loving a Lost Lord, the hero is missing and thought dead because the experimental steam ship he was working on blew up. 

Sometimes my characters travel a lot farther than Europe. In The China Bride, (Bride trilogy #2) the hero, Kyle Renbourne, finds his bliss in traveling to far distant lands. We first meet him when he is in Macao, the South China city whose small trading enclave that was the only place Westerners were allowed to visit, and only then during the trading season.

Not infrequently, my characters are just getting off a ship and returning home, though the voyage isn't detailed since it's not relevant to the main story. There's really no end to all these characters at sea because--Britain is an island! 

Do you suppose there's a connection between my seafaring characters and my love of cruising and seeing the sea?  Could be!

Do you like seafaring stories? Do you accept them as a necessary element of books set in Britain? What are some of your favorites? 

Or are you committed to staying firmly on dry land?!!

Mary Jo, thinking fondly of her  North Atlantic cruise last September.

 

Comments

[Beth Anne Miller]

Since my photo looks so lovely at the top of your post, I thought I would chime in to say that I love seafaring stories, and I love being at sea--as long as I have the appropriate seasickness meds. I spent a semester at sea on a schooner while I was in college, and I hurled for almost the entire nine weeks.

Dry land is boring. :)

[Sue McCormick]

I have read a great many sea stories, and I seem to reread many of them (although I draw the line at Melville and I outgrew pirates pretty quickly). So I guess I must like them. But I don't believe I think of them that way. For me, any setting works whenever it's integral to the story AND the story is well structured with interesting believable characters.

That having been said, I agree: Britain is an island nation, and the sea is ALWAYS there. You may not be aware of it, but sooner or later you WILL bump into it, unless you never move.

We made a 12-day tour of the Island of Great Britain and only got truly close to the sea at St. Andrews, BUT Edinburgh and Glasgow, while not in sight of the sea, are busy seaports, and in London you still know that it sued to be. And it FELT like the sea was always near, much more so than when I worked in Manhattan and lived in Jersey City, although actually the sea was closer in both those places. I'm sure that this was because wherever we were in those 12 days all those favorite authors were with us and reminding us of the sea.

[Jenny Wilcox]

I am with Beth Anne; I can read about being at sea and dream of the wind in my hair, etc., but I REALLY need to keep my feet on dry land as well.

[Jenny Wilcox]

Meant to say in my above post, I love the quote from Admiral John Jervis, Earl of St. Vincent.

[Teresa Broderick]

Mary Jo I must correct you on one point. England is an island and Ireland is an island but they do not make up one island if you get my drift. England owns six counties of Northern Ireland and NOTHING else. Irish people would be horrified if they thought the whole of Ireland was being lumped in with England as Great Britain. Lots of people died getting our independence and it's still a sore subject here even after all these years. Hope you don't mind me pointing this out.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Beth, sailing is wonderful but motion sickness is NOT! Luckily the Mayhem Consultant and I have never gotten seasick, or we might have turned into land lubbers. *G*

Thanks again for letting me use that gorgeous photo of yours.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Sue, I agree. I never loved pirate stories, and the sea enters my stories as appropriate. But you're very right--in the British Isles, one is very aware of the sea around you.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Jenny, it's very good to know what we can do, and what we shouldn't do!

[Mary Jo Putney]

Isn't that a GREAT quote?!! Like you, I love it.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Teresa, I think you misread what I typed. Ireland and Great Britain are the largest islands in the British Isles. England is only part of Great Britain, an island it shares with Scotland and Wales (and not always comfortably!) The island of Ireland is mostly the Republic of Ireland (Eire--I love that name), with those six northern counties that are the fourth part of the United Kingdom. I NEVER would have said Ireland and England are the same island because they AREN'T. There's a sizable body of water called the Irish Sea separately Ireland and Great Britain. I guess I should have spelled it out more clearly, sorry!

[Lillian Marek]

I've always (well, except for two years) lived near the sea, and I feel as if it's a necessity in my life. I've never done much sailing, but as long as the sea is there, I have an escape route. The sea can take me anyplace I want to go.

Mountains, on the other hand, have never much appealed. Those two years away from the sea were spent in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Very beautiful and scenic, but mountains always make me feel trapped.

My brother, on the other hand, loved mountains. Go figure.

[Karen W.]

I've lived on one Island or another for most of my life and fairly close to the sea so if the wind shifts you can smell the ocean. Except for 3 years spent in the Northern Interior of British Columbia, Canada. I was born in the UK and we spent the last years there in Cornwall. Then we moved to Vancouver Island where water travel is a fact of life unless you fly if you want to get off the Island.
The 3 years I spent in Northern BC was hard not just for the really cold weather (a few weeks each winter at -50 Celsius), but for the lack of Ocean water. I had a lake behind where I lived and the whole area I was in was called the Lakes District, but oh how I missed the sea! We'd go home to the Island for visits and I'd stand out on the deck of the Ferry until I was frozen, then go inside to warm up and back out on deck again just smelling the ocean. Hubby would shake his head and read his book. The Ferry ride was 1hr35m each way on the shorter route to Nananimo. Victoria was a different time between runs.
But the Ocean is my sanity. While I don't mind riding it - so far I've not gotten motion sickness from it, even when pregnant - I've not gone on huge ocean voyages or cruises. So I can't guess how I'd fare. I do know I can't be happy when too long away from the sea.
There must be brine in my blood by now. :-D

[Karin]

Chiming in late......but I love seafaring stories. Elizabeth Essex has written some of my favorites in her "Reckless Brides" series. I'm also in love with "The Rebel Pirate" by Donna Thorland.

[Teresa Broderick]

Sorry if I got the wrong end of the stick. I live in the Republic of Ireland even though I was born in England so I'm sort of stuck in the middle. It's still a sore spot with the Irish how they were treated in the past by England. Silly I know but there you are.