By Paul Carrier
I love a good seafaring yarn from the Age of Sail. The late, legendary Patrick O’Brian, author of the Aubrey-Maturin novels, is an almost godlike creature in my estimation.
But in one respect, much nautical fiction has a predictable sameness. That’s because most of it takes place during the Napoleonic Wars, and the hero invariably is a British naval officer determined to teach those dastardly French bastards a thing or two.
There are some exceptions, including several excellent novels by James Nelson that focus on American exploits during the Revolutionary War. But the fine Horatio Hornblower novels of C. S. Forester, starring a 19th-century British naval officer, set the standard in terms of era and perspective, even inspiring later authors to sail the same waters.
That’s why Gentleman Captain is refreshing. It takes place shortly after the restoration of the British monarchy in the 17th century, when King Charles II reclaimed the throne that his father Charles I lost (along with his head) during the English Civil Wars. The action occurs more than a century before the adventures of Hornblower, et al.
This was a “hugely important period in naval history,” author J. D. Davies notes on his web site. It saw “some of the largest battles of the sailing age, the beginnings of a professional navy, the evolution of the ‘line of battle’ and a number of dramatic historical events, such as the Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of London and the Dutch attack on the Medway in 1667, debatably the greatest defeat in British history.”
Gentleman Captain doesn’t simply break the mold in terms of time period. It also stars an unusual protagonist: Matthew Quinton, the gentleman captain of the title. Unlike the stereotypical hero of many seafaring tales, a commander who is every inch the seaman, Quinton doesn’t know a luff from a lubber’s hole. He’s the brother of an earl who happens to be a close friend of the king. It turns out such appointments were not uncommon. As a history of the period puts it: “There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.”
As Gentleman Captain opens, Quinton is about to lose his first ship, the Happy Restoration, which runs aground off the coast of Ireland, killing most of the crew. Yet the king then places him in command of the Jupiter, a small frigate that sails to Scotland with the larger and more powerful Royal Martyr, to try to prevent a rebellion there.
It is not an enviable task. Quinton wants a commission in the cavalry, not the navy. The Jupiter’s crew, aware of the destruction of the Happy Restoration, has no faith in its new captain, who takes command after the ship’s previous captain died under mysterious circumstances. The dead man’s nephew, who is convinced that his uncle was murdered, is Quinton’s distracted second in command aboard the Jupiter. And unlike Quinton, whose family fought for the king during the Civil Wars, the captain of the Royal Martyr served Parliament and Oliver Cromwell before turning his coat after the restoration of the monarchy.
"I attempted to appear at once splendid and authoritative," Quinton muses after reading the Articles of War, the navy's code of conduct, to his new crew, "but probably succeeded only in resembling a leaf on a branch in an October breeze."
Whatever qualities Quinton may lack as a sailor, he serves the reader well as the narrator of this tale. His tone is a bit formal and mildly archaic, as befits a 17th-century Englishman, yet his style is lyrical as well.
“A ship setting her sails is a glorious sight, especially by evening’s dying light,” Quinton tells us as the Jupiter and the Royal Martyr leave Portsmouth, bound for Scotland. “It is truly a sight to elevate even the dullest heart. As we became a proper man-of-war, rather than a great mass of idle wood swaying on an anchor with the tides, I saw the Royal Martyr moving out ahead of us, her sails already well set, her great red-white-red ensign spilling over her stern lanterns, newly lit.”
Despite a fine cast of highly individualistic characters, Gentleman Captain seemed poised to disappoint with a becalmed plot in the early going. But it sprang to glorious life in the final chapters, thanks to a dramatic turn of events that culminated in an action-packed confrontation at sea - just the sort of thing fans of nautical fiction love.
