age of sail – Moe Lane

A most excellent series of posts about the Breeze of Spithead…

…may be found at Age of Sail. This is an account of a rather significant mutiny among the British fleet during the period just before the Napoleonic Wars: I am not that familiar with the events in question, which only makes this more interesting to me.

I probably should pick up Floating Republic… unless Age of Sail has another suggestion?

‘Because I couldn’t fly.’

– As Age of Sail reminds us, this was reportedly the reply by Colonel John Cope to the question of why he run all the way from from Edinburgh to Carlisle (about 74 or so miles) to escape a rebel Highlander regiment.

Speaking as the grandson of a MacMillan, I’m not surprised in the slightest.

AoS has the song by the Tannahill Weavers up at the site, as well as another pretty good post right afterward illustrated how AoS naval fiction writers have such a untapped field of historical narrative to draw from. Check ’em both out.

Moe Lane

PS:

Ooh. Pretty new site, with pretty, old ships.

It’s called Age of Sail, and it looks like a historical blog discussing precisely that.

I came into Age of Sail fiction from the science fiction end of it, actually: reading S.M. Stirling and David Weber got me reading Patrick O’Brian and C.S Forester (I’m currently halfway through A&E’s Horatio Hornblower series, and enjoying it muchly). And then, of course, there’s George MacDonald Fraser’s The Pyrates, which is required reading for anybody who loves old Hollywood swashbucklers (and who doesn’t). So I guess I’m explaining why this is going on the blogroll…

Moe Lane

PS: OK, one last one: Naomi Novik. For all your “Napoleonic warfare novels with dragons added; only, and this is really important to note, adding the dragons doesn’t make the whole thing suck horribly, or indeed at all” needs.