Cindy Vallar's Blog - Posts Tagged "biography"

Favourite of Fortune: Captain John Quilliam Trafalgar Hero by Andrew D. Lambert

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A native son of the Isle of Man, John Quilliam is feted in artwork and museums there. Elsewhere, few know his name or what he achieved during his lifetime. Favourite of Fortune changes this.

Quilliam, the eldest of seven children, was baptized in 1771; it is the only historical record of his existence until he left the island in 1785. Once he joined the Royal Navy, he rose from able seaman through the ranks to become a post-captain. Early in his career, he served aboard the ship that carried Britain’s first ambassador to China. He took part in the fleet actions at Camperdown, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar. As the fourth most important figure aboard Victory during the last battle, he would be included in Benjamin West’s painting depicting Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson’s death.

During two plus decades of service, he came to the notice of influential men and numbered Nelson, James de Saumarez, and Richard Keats among his friends. He also acquired the necessary skills, experience, judgment, and perseverance that made him a good officer. He possessed an uncanny knack for refitting and repairing vessels, while his varied experiences included convoy and blockade duty, shipwreck, smugglers, privateers, Spanish gold, and prize money. He served on a court martial and was later brought up on charges even though he was obeying secret orders. Even after his retirement, he maintained an interest in the navy and in technology, especially if the innovation might help save sailors’ lives.

From historical records, the authors provide an almost complete timeline of his naval career and strip away the inaccuracies and myths surrounding him. They incorporate maps, illustrations, and end notes, as well as a bibliography, glossary, and index. Each author has a connection to this man, be it a familial relationship or through research. They combine their knowledge of the Royal Navy, the Isle of Man, and this “man who steered the Victory at Trafalgar” to craft an authoritative, yet highly readable biography. (vii)




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The Pirate King: The Strange Adventures of Henry Avery and the Birth of the Golden Age of Piracy by Sean Kingsley

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


He leads a mutiny in the last decade of the 17th century. He captures a ship belonging to the Indian emperor. The garnered treasure makes him very rich. As a result of this single act, he becomes the world’s first most-wanted criminal. Then he simply disappears. His name is Henry Avery, and these are the basic facts that appear in pirate histories. None satisfactorily answer the questions of who he was and what became of him.

Fast forward to 1978. Cowan and his wife are searching for a shipwreck off Orkney, and Zélide is doing a deep dive into the Scottish archives for information. One misfiled document catches her attention. It is a letter, partially encoded and written by “Avery the Pirate,” four years after he disappeared. She spends a decade tracking down its authenticity before other shipwrecks necessitate the Cowans’ complete attention. Then, in 2020, Kingsley mentions “pirates” during a visit with Rex Cowan. This book reveals what they discovered about Henry Avery and his connection to Daniel Defoe, a master spy and disseminator of misinformation, and Dr. Thomas Tenison, archbishop of Canterbury.

A Pirate King reads like a novel, even though it’s both a biography and a history. While the details on how the research was done are briefly covered, the primary foci are on the players, the influences that led them along the paths they took, and the wider picture of world events that had direct and indirect bearing on them. It is essentially a mystery story that convincingly reveals what happened to this most-wanted pirate, why he was never caught and punished, and how he fell in with a Dissenter who often found himself penniless and evading creditors.

In some regards, this depiction of Avery deviates with previously published books on the pirate. Instead, it portrays him as a more complex person and provides rationales for why he went on the account and why he joined forces with Defoe and Tenison. Using a 1709 publication (written by an author whose identity can’t be verified) to show Avery’s mindset during the pillaging of the Ganj-i-Sawai is somewhat questionable. It does, however, add to the smoke screen that the authors suggest was created to divert people’s attention away from the real Avery and his whereabouts.

The book includes a timeline, a center section of illustrations, a list for further reading, an index, and notes. The illustrations include photographs of the Avery letter, while one note includes an interesting hypothesis as to the identity of Captain Charles Johnson, the author of A General History of Pyrates (1724).

I have read several books on Henry Avery over the years, but The Pirate King is by far the most absorbing and compelling. It fills in the blanks that other volumes have, answering not just the who but also the why and how. Another key component is that the lives and deeds of Avery and Defoe are not related in vacuums. Instead, they unfold within the events and politics of the day to provide readers with a broader, more understandable perspective. In essence they have done what Richard Lawrence wrote to code breaker John Wallis in 1657: “If you can finde out a key whereby to picke this locke, you are able to reade any thinge.”


(This review first appeared at Pirates and Privateers: http://www.cindyvallar.com/Kingsley.html)



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The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower: A Biography of C.S. Forester's Famous Naval Hero by C. Northcote Parkinson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


When writers create stories and populate them with characters, it’s necessary to also flesh out details about who these people are and why they are as they appear in the books. This allows the authors to craft believable characters and readers to see them as “real” people. One such character who has stood the test of time is C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower, whose life unfolded over thirty years in twelve books. Forester pieced together Hornblower’s life from documentary evidence that the admiral’s descendant donated to the Royal Navy College, Greenwich in 1927.

In 1970, Parkinson discovered that three boxes of new material about Viscount Horatio Hornblower had come to light. The admiral had refused to permit these papers to be seen by others until 100 years after his death. The problem came in tracking down these containers since the companies to which they were originally entrusted had undergone change during that time lapse. What Parkinson eventually found were details that filled in gaps left by Forester’s accounts of Hornblower’s life. So much was new that Parkinson decided to write a biography about this legendary character.

A biography is defined as the history of a person’s life, and that person is someone who actually lived. For all intents and purposes, this book is an actual biography complete with appendices, correspondence, illustrations, a family tree, diagrams, and maps. It is also indexed and one illustration is of a title page of a book that Hornblower owned and signed. The twelve chapters chronicle his life from Schoolboy to Midshipman to Lieutenant all the way through his achieving Admiral of the Fleet. Much of the book focuses on his naval career, but there are also personal moments, such as his marriage to his landlady’s daughter, his children, and the loves of his life, one of whom was related to Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.

This book is a compelling read and a must for those who have enjoyed the Hornblower novels, or those unfamiliar with the first edition published in 1970, and those who know Horatio Hornblower only through the movies that illustrate his early exploits. You will not be disappointed and you will most likely learn new details about this fascinating, though fictional, admiral.


(This review first appeared at Pirates and Privateers: http://www.cindyvallar.com/Parkinson....)



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