St. Martin's Literary Fiction asked David Dyer:

You trained as a ship’s officer at the Australian Maritime College. How did your hands-on experience sailing the world’s oceans help you write this book?

David Dyer I really enjoyed my four years of study at the Australian Maritime College. The course was structured in such a way that I spent half my time at the college and half my time at sea on merchant ships. It was a great way to see the world. I worked mostly on oil tankers, some of them large enough to carry three times the Titanic’s weight in oil!

My experience at sea was essential in my later writing of The Midnight Watch. It not only gave me the knowledge I needed to understand the technical and navigational aspects of the Californian’s story, it allowed me to describe the atmospherics and psychology of shipboard life. A ship at sea is an isolated place, many miles from the ordinary world, and it has its own codes of behavior and subtle power dynamics. Understanding these dynamics was key to unlocking the mystery of what happened on the Californian.

During my time at sea I also experienced the mesmerizing isolation of the ‘midnight watch’, the ship’s watch which gives my novel its title. The midnight watch takes place during the dark hours of 12am to 4am, and is usually kept by the second officer, who stands on the bridge staring into the blackness. It is a lonely time because almost everyone is else on the ship is asleep. Whenever I stood the midnight watch I would wander out to the bridge wing, lean against the rail and stare out to the starry horizon. I felt very small in a vast universe, and sometimes the water below seemed to beckon me to jump in. I’d quickly step back from the rail!

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