Tension and conflict on the high seas

Guest Blog by Author Linda Collison

HM Bark Endeavour replica.

Photo taken by John Hill

I’m packing my duffel to go sailing and feeling so conflicted about being at sea again.

Topaz is our sailboat, a 36-foot sloop moored at the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor in Hawaii. Bob and I have sailed her many thousands of blue water miles around the Hawaiian Islands; we’ve sailed to Bora-Bora and back. Oh, that sounds so romantic, I know. But as Samuel Johnson once said, “Being on a boat is like being in prison – with the chance of drowning” Or words to that effect.

I have a love/hate relationship with Topaz. With water. I am both attracted to the ocean and repelled by it, I find voyaging sometimes thrilling, sometimes tedious, and sometimes scary as hell. At sea I struggle with both claustrophobia and agoraphobia. To tell you the truth, I have an abiding fear of deep water and it is this fear, this underlying tension that fuels my writing.

Star-Crossed, my first published novel, was conceived in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean aboard HM Bark Endeavour, an Australian built replica of Captain James Cook’s famed vessel. The Endeavour was a floating time machine that transported me to the mid-18^th century during the three weeks I served as ordinary seaman, along with 54 other time travelers sailing from Vancouver to Hawaii. For three weeks we stood our watches, patched sails, braided reef points, scrubbed the deck and the dishes, climbed aloft and out on the footropes of the yards to make and furl sail, took our tricks at the helm. We lived by the striking of the ship’s bell, by the orders of our superior officers, and in the camaraderie of our mates.

Bob and I signed on together and, although we are married, we slept separately in hammocks strung from the deckhead 18’ apart, as per 18^th century British Navy regulation. And because my last name begins with a “C” and his begins with an “R” we weren’t even swinging in tandem, but were half a boat length apart. My billet was next to Joe, a former dentist from Southern California. We bumped elbows as we swung in our canvas hammocks, listening to the creaking and groaning of the living ship and the voices of those on watch above us..

At first going aloft was terrifying, but terror soon gave way to exhaustion. Then gradually we started to actually enjoy the process and by the time we reached Hawaii we were scampering gleefully, almost agilely, up the ratlines and we were familiar with the maze of hempen lines that were Endeavour’s rigging.

It was aboard ship on a night watch in the middle of the North Pacific, when the character Patricia showed herself to me and insisted I write her to life. When I got off the ship in Kona, Hawaii, Patricia came with me. For the next six years I researched the Georgian Navy and mid-18^th century British history, while writing Patricia’s story. Finding an agent was like finding a needle in a haystack, if you’ll excuse the cliché. It took nearly a year.

In 2006 Star-Crossed was published by Knopf! Now I was sailing with a bone in my teeth, baby! And the reviews were awesome. But Knopf didn’t want to continue the series, though I had written a bomb of a sequel. My agent didn’t think any other publisher would be interested in publishing the sequel to a book Knopf held the rights to. She lost interest, we parted ways. I took a break, published an article in Cruising World, started a new novel, set at sea.

But Patricia would not be forgotten. Nearly five years after the publication of Star-Crossed, I found a publisher. Or should I say my publisher found me – on Facebook – and Surgeon’s Mate; book two of the Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventure Series was published by Fireship Press!

I’m writing the first draft of book three now; Patricia just won’t let me go. It’s never easy, writing down someone else’s life, reliving their fears and desires. She keeps pushing me to deeper water where there’s no land in sight. I’m still afraid of capsizing, of drowning, but that’s what drives me to write my way home.

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