Authors Electric

‘We’ve waited for a cargo and we’ve waited for a crew, And last we’ve waited for a tide, and now the waiting’s through. O don’t you hear the deep-sea wind and smell the deep-sea foam, Out beyond the harbour on the long road home?’ The Complete Poetry of Cicely Fox Smith edited by Charles Ipcar and James Saville I asked my friend, the artist, writer and musician, Claudia Myatt, what she knew of the poet Cicely Fox Smith (1882-1954). She was immediately able to point me to a recording of ‘Rosario’, sung by her own Quaynotes group in Suffolk. She had used this verse from ‘The Long Road’ (first published in Canada in December 1912) to preface their performance. But how many other people, outside the UK and US folk scenes, have heard of Cicely Fox-Smith today. It’s one of those questions where one hopes to be shouted down by an indignant roar; Of course I have, how can you have been so ignorant? But, with the zeal of the convert, I’m going ahead anyway. I’ve had Charles Ipcar and James Savi...

  His Own Little Ship FB Harnack for Yachting Monthly September saw the publication of Uncommon Courage: the Yachtsmen Volunteers or World War II  in a paperback edition. It’s given me the greatest pleasure particularly as the publisher’s budget -- and editorial goodwill -- was extended to cover 16 extra pages for additional material as well as the inclusion of photographs. People dug deep in their collections to assist. Kate, at the Adlard Coles office, was endlessly patient as I continually wheedled more in; publisher Liz waved ideas through. When I hold its neat pocket-friendly shape now, I feel it's stuffed full of other people's kindnesses. The new frontispiece comes courtesy of Yachting Monthly magazine (thank you YM editor, Theo Stocker). It’s a drawing by FB ‘Fid’ Harnack (b1897) who served in both the first and second world wars. The figure of the officer gazing through binoculars at the yard where his yacht has been laid up, while his ship – is it a destroyer? – ste...

  An odd quirk in the human brain allows us to feel that the things we love are living, even when they are manufactured objects – like boats, for instance. Things that live can also die. I’ve just been reading the writer and sailor, Peter Nichols, mourning the death of his yacht, Toad . Toad is gone. I know this absolutely as I sit here in the cockpit on what is now becoming rather a nice day. The sun is out, the sea is going down. Knowing this I look at the boat around me, the teak vent boxes I built on the cabin roof. The stainless-steel guard rail stanchions I installed. The winches, the rigging. The new compass Martin and I hooked up. The slight imperfection beneath the paint on the cabin side that I know is my plug of a hole made by Harry’s useless depth gauge. I look up and down the boat and I cannot see an inch of it that I haven’t remade according to my idea of what would make Toad the best it could be. Now I know that the leak will not get better but worse, that I mus...

Golden Globe prizegiving  'Ou est le capitaine? has long been one of the more irritating FAQs for solo women sailors and members of all-female crews, as on-shore officials or casual passers-by look automatically for the man in charge. Perhaps it’s finally falling out of use in the wake of consistent female achievement? Look at Barry Pickthall’s photo of the crowds at Les Sables D’Olonne cheering Kirsten Neuschäfer, winner of the 2022-23 Golden Globe Race: consider 80-year-old Jeanne Socrates, the oldest person (not woman) to have sailed round the world alone and unassisted via the Southern Ocean’s five great capes, who has recently set out again to cruise across the Pacific. Last year I wrote about the appointment of Jude Terry as Britain’s first female Admiral and  the achievement of England’s  Lionesses  football team, building on the determination of their 20th predecessors . Currently the military buzz is around Lt General Sharon Nesmith possibly becoming the ...

‘Is it any good?’ Francis asked, when he noticed what I’d been reading with such total absorption since the early hours. ‘Bally brilliant!!’ I replied, without thinking. Then I had to laugh because the book was The Lion of  Sole Bay and I was the person who had written it…allegedly. But please, before you throw this blatant puffery aside, let me explain a little more. The section I was reading, when I gave myself away, was the first of 'The Sole Bay Lectures' by MW Vandervelde. These come as an appendix to the adventure story and are not fiction, though I had, for a moment, forgotten that MW Vandervelde was a made-up character. The history he writes, however, is true – or as as true as diligent research could make it. I had simply forgotten, at that moment, who had actually undertaken the research. Checking the acknowledgements I was relieved to discover that MW Vandervelde (or me) had been reading the primary source accounts by Sir John Narborough who was a key combatant, at ...