Bringing History Alive

My new blog is a “blog within a blog” and is based on a recent radio interview I did with Bookmark Radio in Denver.

By Michael Scott, co-host of Bookmark Radio

USS Constellation and L'Insurgente

What better way to learn about the early history of our country than with a series of engrossing novels that also get the facts right and weave in the actual historical figures who played pivotal roles during this era? That’s what it’s all about for Bill Hammond, author of the Cutler Family Chronicles, a series of nautical / historical fiction novels that are meticulously researched and thoroughly vetted.

Bill was my guest on Bookmark Radio on Monday, April 16.  (I was flying solo—my co-host Wendy was not able to make the show but she contributed by texting in some very good questions!)  You can hear the interview online here. The fourth book in his series, A Call to Arms, is scheduled for release in November by the Naval Institute Press in Annapolis, MD. Bill is working diligently on the fifth volume.

The Cutler Family Chronicles cover the years 1774 through 1815 as seen through the eyes of the Cutler family, which has residences in both England and New England, and also on the island of Barbados.  In the first book, A Matter of Honor, protagonist Richard Cutler is a Massachusetts teenager who joins the Continental Navy to avenge the death of his brother, who in turn had been pressed into service by the British. Each book stands alone, but I recommend reading them all in order since the characters evolve throughout the series.

It was almost inevitable that Bill would take on this mammoth literary project.  He grew up in Massachusetts on Cape Ann (“fifty feet from the ocean”) and learned to sail at age eight. His family was very literary and all were voracious readers.  Bill loved history and was a college history major. It all ties together so well!

Interest in nautical fiction, a subcategory of historical fiction, is growing according to Bill. He points out there are many excellent writers in this genre including C.S. Forester and Patrick O’Brian. The Cutler Family Chronicles tell the story of this era from the American perspective (the Continental Navy and the U.S. Navy) rather than the more common British viewpoint.

Look for the books from the Cutler Family Chronicles in your local bookstore and, of course, through Amazon and other on-line sources. Be sure to check out Bill’s website, www.bill-hammond.com, if only to see the beautiful cover artwork on these books!  My thanks to Bill Hammond for taking the time to join us on Book Mark Radio!

Michael Scott is co-host of the weekly radio show, Bookmark Radio.  www.bookmarkradio.com. It is on air live at 4:00 MDT in Denver, Colorado.  Follow the show on Twitter: @BookmarkRadio.  Please “LIKE” the show at www.facebook.com/bookmarkradio

Terror in Whitehaven, 1778

Attack on Whitehaven
painting by Col. Charles Waterhouse

In the 1770's the town of Whitehaven was one of England's busiest seaports. Located near the shores of the Irish Sea, it looked out upon the Solway Firth that comprised the westernmost boundary between England and Scotland. Because Whitehaven was near where John Paul Jones was born and raised in the Scottish Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, it was where Jones decided to launch his one-ship invasion of England. Although this raid was strongly opposed by most of his officer corps, especially by First Lieutenant Thomas Simpson, it was sanctioned by a host of American dignitaries, including America's emissary in Paris, Benjamin Franklin.

John Paul Jones monument
in Whitehaven

Just after midnight on April 23, 1778, Jones ordered two ship's boats lowered away from the weather deck of the Continental sloop of war Ranger. Thirty sailors and Marines clambered down into the boats. Jones objectives: to first spike the guns of the English fort protecting the entrance to the harbor and the firth, and then to set fire to the three hundred or so vessels nested together at anchor in the harbor -- most of them either coastal merchantmen or coal transports. If the fires spread to the town, so much the better. Jones had no military objectives. Whitehaven held no strategic importance to him or to anyone else. It was simply a town that Jones had sailed in and out of many times in his boyhood, and it was here that he proposed to strike fear and panic among the citizens of Whitehaven – and by extension, among the entire British nation.

Despite a prolonged row ashore caused by shifting winds and a strong ebb tide, Jones realized his first objective. During the first inklings of dawn, he and his captain of Marines, Lt. Wallingford, entered the lightly garrisoned fort and spiked its cannon, temporarily disabling them. Jones, however, failed to realize his second objective, in part because the lanterns in both boats ran out of fuel sufficient to light a conflagration, and in part because a member of his raiding party, an Irishman, slipped away as dawn approached and ran along a harbor street of Whitehaven shouting out a Paul Revere-style warning. Only a single vessel, the collier Thompson, was set aflame, and the domino effect of one burning mast collapsing onto another mast did not materialize. Meanwhile, a fire alarm was sounded, Whitehaven's fire-fighting equipment was mobilized, and large numbers of townsfolk came running to the quays dressed in nightclothes and brandishing family weapons. Jones was forced to retreat to his two boats and back to Ranger, which he did without incident under the silence of the fort's spiked cannon.

We Americans do not like to think of ourselves as perpetrating any overt act of terrorism at any time in our history. But the raid on Whitehaven was one such act. As stated above, it had no military objective, other than perhaps to draw ships of the Royal Navy away from the Channel in pursuit of Ranger. Its primary purpose was to spread panic among British citizenry and it succeeded in doing just that. Britons were not accustomed to having their country invaded, even by a single ship, and few people living long the coast could rest easily at night knowing that ship was prowling offshore, ready, willing and able to strike again. As Midshipman Richard Cutler responds to Captain Jones in Ranger's after cabin when asked for his opinion of the proposed raid in A Matter of Honor, "It's a bold plan, Captain, because it does not rely on success. American Marines landing on British soil will have its effect, no matter the outcome." As it turned out, he was right.

What Became of John Paul Jones?

John Paul Jones*

Many people are aware that John Paul Jones was the one great naval commander to serve in the Continentail Navy during the American Revolutionary War.  His exploits in British waters as captain of Ranger and then of Bonhomme Richard are the stuff of legend.

Fewer people are aware of his earlier life.  Born on the southeast coast of Scotland in 1747, John Paul went to sea at an early age as a merchant sailor.  As master of his own vessel in the 1770s, he killed a member of his crew, a mutineer.  He claimed it was self-defense, but feared that a court in Tobago would find him guilty nonetheless.  So he fled to America, added "Jones" to his name, and for several years managed the Virginia estate of his deeased brother. Frustrated by the life of a gentleman farmer, he decided to join the navy.

Few people are aware, however, of what became of Jones after the Revolutionary War.  He remained in Paris, a city much to his liking and where he was revered, until he grew restless for action.  To quote from my novel For Love of Country:

"He [Richard Cutler] was referring to the rank of Rear Admiral bestowed upon Jones by her most Catholic majesty, the Tsarina of Russia, Catherine the Second. Three years ago, fed up with Congressional reluctance to invest in a navy, Jones had accepted the invitation of the Empress Catherine to join her Black Sea fleet in an attack against the crumbling Ottoman Empire. That fleet was under the titular command of a Romanov prince, Admiral Potemkin, vested with wresting Constantinople away from the Muslim Turks who had occupied the city for three centuries. Having liberated the Christians there, the Empress expected to receive, as just compensation for doing God’s work, a warm water port for her navy and an outlet to the Mediterranean Sea.

Once aboard the Russian flagship, Jones quickly concluded that Potemkin had no future as a naval commander. It took considerable effort and tact to convince Potemkin that Russia would be better served were he to hand over the reins of commander-in-chief to Jones, advice the reluctant prince finally accepted. At the Battle of Liman, having secretly reconnoitered the enemy fleet the night before from a rowboat, Jones destroyed fifteen enemy warships while killing three thousand Turks and taking sixteen hundred prisoners – all at the cost of one Russian frigate and eighteen Russian sailors. When reports of the stunning victory reached the capital, all Russia rejoiced except for one man, Prince Potemkin, who, stung by what he deemed a usurpation of his rightful glory, publicly accused Jones of molesting a ten-year-old girl selling butter in a St. Petersburg. square. Disgusted and disillusioned, Jones left Russia when the charges were dropped and returned to Paris, where details of his adventures were widely published."

Jones died in Paris in 1792.  In 1906 his remains were brought aboard the USS Brooklyn.  With three other cruisers acting as escorts, the "father of the U.S. Navy" sailed home on his final vovage.  Today, his coffin rests, appropriately, in Bancroft Hall at the United States Naval Academy.

*Painting by Charles Wilson Peale, c1781, published in the US before 

1923 and public domain in the US.