Anthony Molloy

As some of my readers might know, I served in the Navy in the sixties. Writing my other two series, and having served on three ships that were actually in WW2, I had first-hand knowledge and some idea of what it would have been like to eat, sleep and fight in those ships during that period. In the '60s we still slept in hammocks in confined spaces, eat terrible food, with weevils and drew our tot of rum with the same enthusiasm that the seaman of Nelson's Navy would easily have recognised.

Even the newer Guided Missile Destroyers were cramped. Two of my shipmates, from the For'ard Seamen's Mess on HMS Norfolk, wrote to a farming magazine saying they were thinking of keeping pigs and gave the dimensions of our mess deck, complete with the specifications of the air conditioning they had from one of the 'Tiffies'. The answer was seven pigs, but you need more ventilation. There were 68 men in that mess.

I read just the other day that the Royal Navy had changed little since the days of Nelson through to the mid-'60s. That was when they brought in bunks and the new GM Destroyers. So, I hope I will bring a sense of authenticity to my new series as well. Sadly the people who served in the old navy, before this pink and fluffy one, are disappearing at a pace.

Book 2 in the Culpeper Series takes place in 1781. It's called 'The Cry of the Lookout' As usual it is a hard-hitting story. Here's a teaser: I've employed some of the words used by the people who were there to season my own.

As the casualties inexorably mounted, those still sound of life and limb had to share their time between more than one gun. They worked like demons themselves to feed the ravenous, quenchless appetite of the fierier devils consuming the King’s enemies. Grape and chain, round and spider shot all did their odious best to cripple and kill both vessels and their sweat-drenched crews.

Culpeper saw one man labouring with others to clear a fallen spar from their gun, simply vanish in the searing flash of igniting gunpowder. His flesh burnt from his body, clothes alight, the agonised man lifted both arms as if imploring God’s relief. A split second later, as if in answer, he found it. For a passing shot cut him in two.

Another who had his hands cut off by the same shot, received another, which tore open his bowel. Men gathered round and under the direction of Bythesee, the two bodies were lifted unceremoniously overboard with the wreckage of the spar they had been labouring to clear.

The second in command of marines, a noble-hearted fellow, named Neville, fell at Culpeper’s side as grapeshot struck him close to the heart, Culpeper kneeling to help, heard him exclaim, ‘Oh! My God!’ followed almost immediately by the death rattle as he died. He, too, joined the floating dead strewn around the immobile ‘Paington’.

Later Culpeper goes below...

Culpeper went below to visit the wounded; he stood aside for the surgeon’s mate. He was carrying a tub of limbs, but shortly amputated from some suffering wretches. He handed the shocking relic to one of his landsmen and joined Culpeper in the orlop. It and its surrounding compartments were filled, not only with his people but with the groans and cries of the wounded. It was a terrible sight to see and to hear, an appalling spectacle made even more repellant by the smell of blood, open wounds and faeces. The orlop was literally a slaughterhouse, a knackery, even to the unheeded animal cries for help which filled the air. Here too, as in a slaughter house the soon to die begged for help crying out for their dear ones. More human perhaps was the swearing, incongruently mixed with the murmur of men praying.

The surgeon, as his mate had been, was covered with blood from head to foot, looking more like a slaughterhouse man himself than a doctor. He was as close to an emotional breakdown as Culpeper had ever seen him, exclaiming that having so many wounded he had been forced to utilise the great cabin and gunroom. In his emotive state, he seemed to be most distressed that the officer’s dining table, around which the officers had sat over a merry feast only hours before, was in use as an operating table to treat maimed and mutilated seamen.

They had just moved to the gunroom, which was in a like condition, when close to the outside bulkhead he heard the noise of a boat coming alongside, “Another boat from the Frenchman. More work for you, I fear, Doctor.”

The normally good-natured surgeon turned on him, “I have enough to do. You have made wretched work for us!”

Culpeper bent his head and blew out his cheeks, “I fear I have, but it was my duty. As this is…” With that, he slipped out of his coat and, handing it to the ever-present Bio, set to rendering what aid he could to the suffering surrounding them.

On returning from Spain

Well, here we are in new pastures, back in England after twenty-five years in Spain, and wondering why I left. It's warmer here. If you go to Spain for the warmth don't go to the mountain villages where we ended up, bitter winds off the Sierras, tiled floors and no insulation, are not good for old bones. I say new pastures, in the plural, for a reason. The other new thing on my agender was the Napoleonic period. Emigrating the mind was in many ways, harder than emigrating the body, but I did it. The first book in the Culpeper Sage is now out. I write what I would like to read, sadly nowadays it is harder and harder to find. Action and information on every page makes, for me, a good read. Try this one, and I hope you enjoy reading it at least, half as much as I did writing and researching it. The next book in the series will be out in the summer. I'm off for another plate of fish and chips, which my waistline will tell you has taken the place of red wine as a dummy substitute.

The author reveals all (and is arrested)

Born: Yes I was, despite Hitler bombing my family out of house and home in London. I think it was a personal thing between him and me, I had two balls, and he didn't. If I'm right, it was some sulk.

In truth the house was that run down people never noticed in fact, the whole area was a bit of a tip, so bad that an explosion at the end of our road caused two hundred thousand pounds of improvements.

The evacuation resulted in me being born a “Devonshire Dumpling“. I went back to Bideford once, to the actual nursing home where I was launched, no blue plaque yet. I'm pretty confident that must be down to Council cuts.

Schooling: Rotherhithe New Road. That was the Rotherhithe before they got rid of the rats in the riverside warehouses and installed the other sort.

I was actually there, aged nine, when our neighbour's Sunday joint floated away on the neap tide of 1953. Surely, everyone alive at the time remembers that, the leg of lamb not the flood. My family and I chased it for miles along with the rest of the starving thousands of Rotherhithe. As I recall it outpaced us all, we were all rather thin and weak at the time, I think it must have ended up gracing the tables of the ultra rich downstream. Undeterred we searched for days until the increasing size of the mob was spotted by the Government. Who realising we looked hungry and, as a measure of their concern, called out the riot squad. They fired rubber bullets at us made from metal; they couldn't afford the rubber at the time thanks to Malayan speculators.

But I digress, my teacher at Rotherhithe thought that because I liked drawing ships, I might like to go to sea. Perfectly logical, when you consider that one of my classmates, who enjoyed drawing plants, later became one.

So, I went to the London Nautical School, there I learnt navigation, seamanship and how to muffle screams whilst receiving six of the best from the headmaster. Again undeterred I left as soon as I could, but they kept dragging me back until, at fifteen, I was able to leave legally and without the blood hounds and the skirmish lines that so blocked the Waterloo traffic.

I ran away to sea for two pound fourteen and six a week gross and enlisted at Blackheath Recruiting Office, not there now, I burnt that to the ground during my first leave.

There followed a year of hell, the beatings were fine, but the sport...every afternoon.

Come on!

Someone, I can't remember who, spotted I wasn't keen and decide I might prefer hard labour; they were all so sensitive in those days. It was then I acquired a liking for hard work. Hard work equals no pain being the rough formula. God, how I loved HMS Ganges. They even put Bromide in your tea; I'm still waiting for that to take effect.

In those days, you signed on in the Navy for nine years from the age of eighteen, there was a chance to buy yourself out when you were twenty-four. I think it was that consoling thought that turned most of us to booze.

Then in 1971 they stopped the tot, That was the last thing I remember until I woke up in a Horticultural College studying that subject and married to my wife (I married her on April the first so as not to forget what a fool I was, I told Brenda it made it easier to remember the date.)

I then spent thirty odd years adjusting to life without brutality until finally, I retired to Spain where I have used their cheap red wine as a kind of dummy ever since. Now I back, returning to the county where I was born to complete the circle of life in a ship shape and Bristol fashion.