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Seaflower
By Julian Stockwyn
Scribner
Seaflower is the third book in Julian Stockwyn's new series about life in the British Navy in the 1700s. It is difficult in reviewing any book of this ilk not to compare it to its well-known predecessors—C.S. Forester's Hornblower books and Patrick O'Brien's Aubry/Maturin series. And sailors who read these series devoutly will, I believe, greatly enjoy Stockwyn's books.
Thomas Kydd, the hero of the series, is a wig maker's apprentice who is pressed into service in the British Navy at the time of the French Revolution. Unlike Hornblower, who began his navy career as a midshipman, or Aubry whom we meet as a lieutenant, Kydd is a landsman of modest upbringing in the very class-conscious British Navy. This means that unlike Forester's and O'Brien's books, Stockwyn's series gives us a glimpse of life before the mast.
Despite the handicap of not having been genteely born or particularly politely raised, it becomes clear by the second book that Kydd isn't destined to return to shore-side life or remain before the mast for long. Like Hornblower, Kydd is quick, energetic, and a natural seaman. In fact, Kydd's character bears a great deal of resemblance to that of Hornblower, which Stockwyn acknowledges in sly references to some of Hornblower's early adventures: "Heard o' this happenin' to a cargo of rice—swells when it's wet, it does," says a seaman when Seaflower develops what sounds to be a leak but no water can be found in the hold. He is referring to a now-famous episode in the first Forester book in which Hornblower loses a ship to expanding rice from an undetected leak.
Kydd's sidekick and "particular friend" is Nicholas Renzi, the son of a noble family who has put himself in exile before the mast in punishment for the crimes of his father against the family's tenants. Renzi is, of course, responsible for teaching Kydd the graces he will require on the quarterdeck. But he plays another role as well; by contrasting the highly educated, wise, and logical Renzi with the traditional characters of nautical fiction, Stockwyn conveys his own vast research about the time and places the pair see in their adventures, giving the books greater depth.
But most importantly, these are adventure stories. Like Forester and O'Brien before him, Stockwyn takes us on a ride around the world in the late 1700s.
Gaelen Phyfe, Book Review Editor
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