Stories from the Age of Sail

I was going to call this article ‘Wooden Ships and Iron Men’ but then I discovered that Avalon Hill beat me to it about fifty years ago, so ‘Stories from the Age of Sail’ will have to do.

This is a brisk canter through my bookshelves, and I was surprised to find how many authors have set stories in the Napoleonic wars, both battles at sea and on land.  Some of these authors were extremely prolific, with bookcounts over 100 being not unusual.  There was a time when I couldn’t pass a bookshop without going in and, once inside, couldn’t leave without buying (yet) another book.  This is a summary of the series of stories I have collected, but I am fairly sure that it isn’t a complete listing.  And if you are prompted to read some of the stories, job done.

Tom Connery – Markham of the Marines

‘Honour’ series of three books featuring George Markham, Lieutenant of Marines – A Shred of Honour, Honour Redeemed, and Honour be Damned.  I have Redeemed.  Tom Connery is a pen-name of David Donachie.

Bernard Cornwell – Richard Sharpe

A series of novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe, portrayed on screen by Sean Bean.  Cornwell (born 1944) has also written The Saxon Stories, a series of novels about the unification of England.

David Donachie – Harry Ludlow

David Donachie (1944 – 2023) also wrote under the pen-names Tom Connery, Jack Ludlow and Jack Cole.  My Donnachie books were published by Pan, and my Connery books by Orion.  Each omits to mention books published by the other…

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Brigadier Gerard

Much better known for his Sherlock Holmes novels, the four books featuring Brigadier Gerard – Uncle Bernac, Exploits of Brigadier Gerard, Adventures of Gerard and The Great Shadow – report on the wars from the French side.

ACD (1859 – 1930), was prolific.  From the dustcover of my BG book:

He wrote the history of the Boer War; he advocated for the Channel Tunnel and warned of the U-boat menace; he was responsible for the steel helmet and the lifejacket being introduced; and he wrote a six-volume history of the First World War. 

Quite a CV!

Frank Eccles – Captain John Lawson

Frank Eccles (died 2013) was born in Manchester.  After serving in the Parachute Brigade during World War Two, fighting at the Battle of Arnhem, he qualified as a schoolteacher and wrote two novels about Captain Lawson – The Barbary Run and The Mutiny Run.  He also wrote ‘Fifty Thousand Overcoats’ about Captain Saunders, set in 1812, when a British ship’s owner/captain comes out of retirement and finds his ship is being used as a blockade runner to supply Bonaparte’s army in Russia with overcoats.

CS Forester – Horatio Hornblower

The Daddy of them all, Forester is said to have got the idea for his first Hornblower book on seeing a kebab, pieces of meat linked by a skewer.  Mr Midshipman Hornblower is a series of short stories linked together by the ship he was serving on, the Frigate HMS Indefatigable.  From this Forester developed Hornblower’s career through to Admiral and the peerage, Baron Hornblower of Smallbridge.  Many of the book covers bear a quote from Winston Churchill, ‘I find Hornblower admirable, vastly entertaining’ and the series inspired C Northcote Parkinson to take time out from writing his famous law to craft a biography. ‘The life and times of Horatio Hornblower.’  Forester wrote much else, including The Good Shepherd, later filmed as Greyhound.

Adam Hardy – George Abercrombie Fox

Adam Hardy is a pen-name of Kenneth Bulmer (1921-2005).  Bulmer wrote hundreds of novels under more than a dozen pseudonyms.

As Adam Hardy he wrote a series of fourteen novels about Fox starting in 1775 when Fox, named after an uncle hanged at Tyburn, joins the Royal Navy as a powder monkey.

Allan Mallinson – Matthew Hervey

Born 1949, Mallinson served in the British Army for 35 years, commanding a regiment, and wrote a series of books about Hervey’s career in the Light Dragoons from Napoleonic times through to conflicts in India and North and South America.

Patrick O’Brian – Jack Aubrey

O’Brian (1914-2000) was born Richard Patrick Russ and changed his name to O’Brian in 1945.  He worked as an ambulance driver and, some sources suggest, in Intelligence, during World War Two.  He wrote a series about Jack Aubrey and his friend Aubrey Maturin, set in the Napoleonic Wars.  Master and Commander has been filmed with Russell Crowe in the title role.

Dan Parkinson – Patrick Dalton

Parkinson (1935-2001) wrote in several genres, including Westerns, as well as his four-book ‘Fox’ series about Patrick Dalton set in the American War of Independence.  Dalton is an Irishman serving in the Royal Navy and is falsely accused of treason.

Dudley Pope- Nicholas Ramage

Pope (1925-1997) joined the Home Guard in 1939 (age 14) and the Merchant Navy two years later.  Torpedoed, he survived two weeks in a lifeboat. After the war, he wrote about Ramage’s career during the Napoleonic Wars in a series of eighteen books, as well as books on modern naval battles such as the River Plate.

Sean Thomas Russell  – Charles Hayden

Born 1952 in Canada, Russell was inspired to write by the books of JRR Tolkien and he wrote  about Charles Hayden and his frigate Thetis during the Napoleonic Wars.  The first, Under Enemy Colours, was published in 2007.

Julian Stockwin – Thomas Kydd

Born 1944 in Hampshire, Stockwin says this about himself:

Since I was a young boy I read the great sea novelists – Forester, O’Brian and many others and the sea fever set in. At 15 I enlisted in the Royal Navy. I was particularly inspired by the stories of those couple of hundred common seamen who became officers and thereby turned themselves into gentlemen. Some became captains of their own ships; even more remarkably, some became admirals. How could it be so? Just what kind of men were they? So, the story of Kydd, a conscripted man who rose to admiral, was born…

Stockwin wrote 27 novels about Kydd, starting with his impressment (in civilian life Kydd was a wig-maker) and charting his career from Ordinary Seaman via Topman to Admiral with the last book in the series published in 2024.

Showell Styles – Lieutenant Michael Fitton, Midshipman Quinn.

Showell Styles (1908-2005) was a keen mountaineer and walker as well as writing over 160 books including his naval fiction about Fitton and Quinn.  He also wrote non-fiction works on mountains such as The Mountaineer’s Weekend Book, and he wrote detective fiction under the pseudonym of Glyn Carr.

James Dillon White – Captain Roger Kelso

JDW was the pen-name of Stanley White (1903-1978).  He wrote a series about Roger Kelso of the Bombay Marine, set in the Indian Ocean at the time of Clive of India.

Richard Woodman – Nathaniel Drinkwater

Richard Woodman (1944-2024) served in the Merchant Navy, working for Trinity House.  Best known for 14 Novels about Nathaniel Drinkwater, he also wrote factual books such as a trilogy of studies of convoys in the Second World War and a five volume history of the British Merchant Navy.

And to move from sail to space:

David Weber – Honor Harrington

David Weber (born 1952) is an American Science Fiction & Fantasy author.  His Honor Harrington novels depict her career in the space navy defending the planet Manticore.  The influence of CS Forester is clear from the initials of his lead character, and he’s written other space opera novels such as The Path of the Fury.
 

© Jim Walshe 2025