by Chris Durbin
Captain Carlisle’s frigate joins the blockade of Louisbourg before winter’s icy grip has eased. Battling fog, hail, rain, frost and snow, suffering scurvy and fevers, and with a constant worry about the wife he left behind in Virginia, Carlisle will face his greatest test of leadership and character yet.
The Cursed Fortress is the fifth of the Carlisle & Holbrooke naval adventures. The series follows the two men through the Seven Years War and into the period of turbulent relations between Britain and her American colonies in the 1760s.
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Old Salt Press
Old Salt Press is an independent press catering to those who love books about ships and the sea. We are an association of writers working together to produce the very best of nautical and maritime fiction and non-fiction. We invite you to join us as we go down to the sea in books.
Visit the website for details of all Old Salt Press books:
www.oldsaltpress.com
The latest great reading from Old Salt Press:
Alaric Bond: Sea Trials
HMS Mistral has emerged from a major refit with one vital element missing – her captain. But Tom King is many miles away aboard a different warship and facing an apparently unbeatable enemy force. Will he survive to claim his rightful place, or is Mistral destined to sail under another’s command? With graphic naval action, danger from the elements and a major conflict of loyalties, Mistral’s sea trials quickly turn into a testing time for her crew as much as their vessel.
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Linda Collison: Rhode Island Rendezvous
Book Three, The Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventures.
Newport Rhode Island: 1765. The Seven Years War is over but unrest in the American colonies is just heating up… Maintaining her disguise as a young man, Patricia is finding success as Patrick MacPherson. Formerly a surgeon’s mate in His Majesty’s Navy, Patrick has lately been employed aboard the colonial merchant schooner Andromeda, smuggling foreign molasses into Rhode Island. Late October, amidst riots against the newly imposed Stamp Act, she leaves Newport bound for the West Indies on her first run as Andromeda’s master. In Havana a chance meeting with a former enemy presents unexpected opportunities while an encounter with a British frigate and an old lover threatens her liberty – and her life.
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Joan Druett: The Discovery of Tahiti
Romance and the islands have gone hand in hand since the bare-breasted young women of Tahiti gave a rousing welcome to the 18th-century European adventurers who discovered the island. It was not just a tropical port of call that Captain Wallis and his men found, but their tales of golden girls and a majestic island queen became a foundation stone of the Romantic Movement, an enduring inspiration for writers, artists, film-makers ... and mutineers.
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Seymour Hamilton: River of Stones (coming soon)
Only three stones of power remain, and only the eight descendants of Zubin can wield them. A ruthless and power-hungry man is intent on stealing the stones, murdering the three leaders of the fleet, and torturing the secrets of navigation from their children. Grand Master Astreya gives his daughter Mairi command of a ship with instructions to keep the younger members of his family far from danger. However, safety is elusive. Mairi must face political turmoil ashore, resolve conflicts with her twin brother Trogen, and lead her young crew through storms, dangerous passages, and battles at sea before she can discover the secret that will lead to the river of stones.
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Rick Spilman: Evening Gray Morning Red
A young American sailor must escape his past and the clutches of the Royal Navy, in the turbulent years just before the American Revolutionary War.
In the spring of 1768, Thom Larkin, a 17-year-old sailor newly arrived in Boston, is caught by Royal Navy press gang and dragged off to HMS Romney, where he runs afoul of the cruel and corrupt first lieutenant. Years later, after escaping the Romney, Thom again crosses paths with his old foe, now in command HMS Gaspee, cruising in Narragansett Bay. Thom must finally face his nemesis and the guns of the Gaspee, armed only with his wits, an unarmed packet boat, and a sand bar.
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V E Ulett: Blackwell's Homecoming
In a multigenerational saga of love, war and betrayal, Captain Blackwell and Mercedes continue their voyage in Volume III of Blackwell's Adventures. The Blackwell family's eventful journey from England to Hawaii, by way of the new and tempestuous nations of Brazil and Chile, provides an intimate portrait of family conflicts and loyalties in the late Georgian Age. Blackwell’s Homecoming is an evocation of the dangers and rewards of desire.
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Bibliography
The following is a selection of the many books that I consulted in researching the Carlisle and Holbrooke Series:
Definitive Text
Sir Julian Corbett wrote the original, definitive text on the Seven Years War. Most later writers use his work as a stepping stone to launch their own.
Corbett, LLM., Sir Julian Stafford. England in the Seven Years War – Vol. I: A Study in Combined Strategy: Normandy Press. Kindle Edition.
Strategy and Naval Operations
Three very accessible modern books cover the strategic context and naval operations of the Seven Years War. Daniel Baugh addresses the whole war on land and sea, while Martin Robson concentrates on maritime activities. Jonathan Dull has produced a very readable account from the French perspective.
Baugh, Daniel. The Global Seven Years War 1754-1763. Pearson Education 2011. Print.
Robson, Martin. A History of the Royal Navy, The Seven Years War. I.B. Taurus, 2016. Print.
Dull, Jonathan, R. The French Navy and the Seven Years’ War, University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Print.
Sea Officers
For an interesting perspective on the life of sea officers of the mid-eighteenth century, I’d read Augustus Hervey’s Journal, with the cautionary note that while Hervey was by no means typical of the breed, he’s very entertaining and devastatingly honest. For a more balanced view I’d read British Naval Captains of the Seven Years War.
Erskine, David (editor). Augustus Hervey’s Journal, The Adventures Afloat and Ashore of a Naval Casanova: Chatham Publishing, 2002. Print.
McLeod, A.B. British Naval Captains of the Seven Years War, The View from the Quarterdeck. The Boydell Press, 2012. Print.
Life at Sea
I recommend The Wooden World for an overview of shipboard life and administration during the Seven Years War.
N.A.M Rodger. The Wooden World, An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy. Fontana Press, 1986. Print.
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The Author
Chris Durbin grew up in the seaside town of Porthcawl in South Wales. His first experience of sailing was as a sea cadet in the treacherous tideway of the Bristol Channel, and at the age of sixteen, he spent a week in a tops’l schooner in the Southwest Approaches. He was a crew member on the Porthcawl lifeboat before joining the navy.
Chris spent twenty-four years as a warfare officer in the Royal Navy, serving in all classes of ships from aircraft carriers through destroyers and frigates to the smallest minesweepers. He took part in operational campaigns in the Falkland Islands, the Middle East and the Adriatic and he spent two years teaching tactics at a US Navy training centre in San Diego.
On his retirement from the Royal Navy, Chris joined a large American company and spent eighteen years in the aerospace, defence and security industry, including two years on the design team for the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers.
Chris is a graduate of the Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, the British Army Command and Staff College, the United States Navy War College (where he gained a postgraduate diploma in national security decision-making) and Cambridge University (where he was awarded an MPhil in International Relations).
With a lifelong interest in naval history and a long-standing ambition to write historical fiction, Chris has completed the first fo
ur novels in the Carlisle & Holbrooke series, in which a colonial Virginian commands a British navy frigate during the middle years of the eighteenth century.
The series will follow its principal characters through the Seven Years War and into the period of turbulent relations between Britain and her American Colonies in the 1760s. They’ll negotiate some thought-provoking loyalty issues when British policy and colonial restlessness lead inexorably to the American Revolution.
Chris lives on the south coast of England, surrounded by hundreds of years of naval history. His three children are all busy growing their own families and careers while Chris and his wife (US Navy, retired) of thirty-seven years enjoy sailing their classic dayboat.
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Fun Fact:
Chris shares his garden with a tortoise named Aubrey. If you’ve read Patrick O'Brian's HMS Surprise, or have seen the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, you'll recognise the modest act of homage that Chris has paid to that great writer. Rest assured that Aubrey has not yet grown to the gigantic proportions of Testudo Aubreii.
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Feedback
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This is the latest of a series of books that will follow Carlisle and Holbrooke through the Seven Years War and into the 1760s when relations between Britain and her restless American Colonies are tested to breaking point.
Look out for the seventh in the Carlisle Holbrooke series, coming soon.
You can follow my Blog at:
www.chris-durbin.com
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