Sea Life (17th-19th Century Britain)

[Valiant]

The idea of the life of a British sailor (a first mate, at that) in the timeframe of the 1600's- mid 1800's has been itching at my mind for a good week now. While the accuracy of the lifestyle is important, just how much accuracy is necessary to make the world of a man aboard a ship seem realistic yet entertaining?

I guess an easier way to state my question is I wish to romanticize ship life of a british sailor, how much realism is too much and how little is too little?

 

[Queshire]

Honestly, I don't know. However the bloody jack series of books takes a good look at naval life around that time frame so I suggest taking a look at that if you need inspiration. Personally I don't think many people know about naval life around that time frame, so you ought to be able to get away with alot.

 

[ThinkerX]

Check out Patrick O Obrian. He wrote a lengthy series of novels featuring a british privateer/navy captain and his doctor sidekick.

In general, lots of routine, enforced with really brutal discipline. You could tell what day of the week it was by what the food was - salt beef, salt pork, pea's, beans, porridge, bread, (infested with weevils like as not). More enlightened captains would supplement this with barrels of apples or some such. Rats on the menu once caught. Carefully measured rum rations. Lots of scurvy. Frequent reading of the bible and code (forget the exact name at the moment). Lots of time up in the masts for a near majority of crewmembers. Specific names for each and every line, spar, and sail. Lots of serious injuries and deaths from falls, lots of ruptured guts from crawling out on spars. About a hundred common crewmen sleeping in hamocs slung in a space about the size of a large present day mobile home. Crew usually not allowed ashore when in port for fear of desertion. Press gangs. And on and on we go...

 

[Butterfly]

C.S Forester's Hornblower was set in the latter part of the period you are referring to.

But If you want to go ahead a good source for info would be the Maritime Museums. here - Galleries & exhibitions : National Maritime Museum : Places : RMG

 

[Fluffypoodel]

I think that historical accuracy for this kind of novel is important to an extent. I think that the life aboard a ship offers a pretty strong background for romanticism. It offers your characters a strong barrier to overcome through a regimented lifestyle. I know that a lot of good books and authors have been tossed out there and I would recommend reading them. But if that does not interest you you mihgt want to look into the historical accounts of Horatio Nelson. He was a British admiral during the Napoleonic wars who did some very unorthodox things and was hailed as a national hero. Luis XIV of France, known as the Sun King also built the french navy up to a caliber that it had not seen before or since so that would be a pretty cool setting to have a first mate arrive in. There are some differences in the time periods that you are discussing that I wanted to address though. During the 1600's much of the naval life centered around the Spanish, the Dutch and the English, with France and Portugal thrown in as well. There are two points that I want to make: the first is that the navy of this time was just getting into its formalization. this was during the English Civil War period so it saw a lot of shifts in ideology as well as the placement of officers due to a political basis. Second the English and Dutch navies were constructed to protect their foreign interests in the East and West Indies, meaning that you would have civilian and military ships working together. Both of these point might be the inspiration to conflict that your first mate might take advantage of.

Two more things and then i'm done, well technically one more thing. If you want to skip out on heavy reading then I would suggest a book called The Mammoth Book of Man O War edited by Mike Ashley. Its a collection of short stories about the age of sail. Its pretty good and offers a wide range of topics. the other is the movie Master and Commander starring Russel Crowe and is based off of one of Patrick O'Brian's books.

I feel like I could go on for a while so if you have any other questions on specifics send them my way, otherwise I hope this helps. Good Luck!

 

[Caged Maiden]

a note about scurvy... Ever wonder why it isn't more common? My dog doesn't eat fruit, why doesn't he get scurvy?

There are only a few animals in the world who don't produce vitamin C themselves, a couple parrots, some bats, some monkeys, and humans. We need fruit in our diets to receive our Vitamin C. So what does it mean when we don't get it?

Well first you suffer a general malaise, followed by pain and easy bruising and spots on the skin. As the deficiency progresses further, loose teeth, bleeding gums and nose, and jaundice. In my nutrition book from school it even says that when collagen is completely compromised, old scar tissue can open. Imagine that. Well eventually it leads to death, and many sailors died in the late 1600's and 1700's. It's estimated scurvy killed 2 million sailors and pirates.

 

[Butterfly]

There are only a few animals in the world who don't produce vitamin C themselves, a couple parrots, some bats, some monkeys, and humans.

Hey, don't forget Guinea Pigs...

 

[Jamber]

I don't think there's any hard and fast rule about too much/too little research (a lot can be forgiven if the writing has flair), but you can find many useful 'what was life like at sea?' books, often quite cheap, for ebook readers. I bought many for a female pirates novel I toyed with writing -- starting with The Pirates Dictionary, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Pirates, The Sea Rover's Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques and How History's Greates Pirates Pillaged, Plundered and Got Away With It. As a complete land-lubber I was mainly interested in shipboard life, and I think I got a good enough sense of it from just those four works, with one or two others.

There's no such thing as too much research, but I can't help feeling there's such a thing as crowding the novel with it. A book called Mary Read: Sailor-Soldier-Pirate did exactly that, at the expense of story and character. In the end I'd rather read a book with great imagination and no research than the opposite.

cheers,
Jennie

 

[wordwalker]

Rule of thumb I like: only brag about how much research helped you but didn't get into the story directly.

 

[Jess A]

Research should compliment your plot/scene. No point writing a scene just to show off what you know.

For me, research helps when I need a character to know what the name of something is (for instance, mentions the bowsprit or fixing the rigging...whatever). May not all get in the book but at least you know what the terminology is. Get a comprehensive diagram with the ship parts/names - for the appropriate ship(s). If you do need to mention something/describe/etc, then you know what your character is looking at.

Also look at ranks and what they do. Knowing what they do during a storm to survive is also useful.

And yum, rats. Inspiring stuff.

 

[SineNomine]

The subgenre matters a lot in this type of thing. In this case, assuming you are talking about historical fiction, research is pretty vital. Fans of historical fiction tend to be sticklers for historically accurate details and so if you get anything blatantly wrong, they are going to have their enjoyment of the story sapped. It really pays off to learn as much as you can. You certainly don't need to include it all obviously, but you do really want to avoid making any huge mistakes.

Other subgenres can have more or less leeway, it all depends on what the focus of the story is. As long as the focus isn't on the minutia of daily life at sea, you can be free to romanticize away and ignore the nitty gritty...

You know, I just now realize that I am conflating "realism" with "grittiness". Huh.

 

[Shockley]

One of the things about sea life is that you can kind of gloss over the things in the background. Rafael Sabatini, one of my all-time favorite writers, wrote a number of books about life on the sea (Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, The Black Swan, Columbus*) and he did it while glossing over the majority of the details. It provided a beautiful background, and that's all it was - the story remained driven by the characters.

*You might ask yourself, 'How interesting could a fictional book about Columbus really be?' and that's a decent question. The answer is that it can be marvelously interesting and innovative, especially if the writer decides that Columbus was a swashbuckler out to knock around pirates. For real.

 

[Steerpike]

Shockley - are all three of those Sabatini books about Columbus (as in, a series), or just the one titled Columbus​?

Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides is a great book that deals with sea-faring without getting bogged down in too much detail.

 

[Shockley]

Just the one titled Columbus. The Sea Hawk is about a European who becomes the leader of a band of Barbary pirates, and Captain Blood (my favorite) is about a man who is exiled after the English Civil War who has all kinds of epic journeys.

I can not recommend Captain Blood highly enough.

 

[Kahle]

Sea travel was rather monotonous, sometimes even boring, especially for passengers. Crew would be occupied with keeping the ship afloat and moving, cleaning, and maintenance work. If your characters are familiar with sea travel or are part of the crew, they might take certain interest in weather and the like, but a landsmen would be utterly confused. For the most part, try to keep to external conflicts (unless you're developing character relations on board, crew vs. passenger, mutiny, etc.). Events like sea battles, doldrums (windless sea where the ship can be literally stopped for up to a month), food and water shortages, new ports, and storms would impact the entire crew (storms can also be horrible for passengers but less frightening for an experienced hand). Aside from those developments, you probably won't need to describe everything in excessive detail. As was mentioned earlier, it would pay to become familiar with the various lines, sails, and other jargon so you can accurately describe the vessel (for instance, there are no ropes on a ship-they're called lines, and your crew may might make jokes about this at the landsmen's expense). Patrick O'brian was mentioned as well. His books are informative, but they almost exclusively use naval terms (however, the captain spends about a chapter in each book explaining everything to the landsmen surgeon for the reader's benefit).

-scurvy was countered by cutting limes and mixing the juice into the sailor's water, hence British sailors' nickname of Limeys. Lemons might work as well.