For those who wish to know upon what historical hook the substance of this last tale is hung, the Trinity House Steamer Vestal did indeed run her own boat down on 14 July 1843 after abandoning an attempt to land at the foot of the cliffs at Hartland Point. Also drawn from life are Captain McCullough and the Sentinel Service, a little known part of the Royal Navy's rich history. As for the two troopers aboard Cyclops in 1780, it is matter of fact that in that year two men were dismissed from the 7th Queen's Own Light Dragoons and sent to serve in the Royal Navy as a punishment. Moreover, cheese issued by the royal dockyards was often of such age and consistency that sailors fashioned it into boxes and worked it like wood, and there is a record of a cheese being fashioned into a mast-truck, fitted with flag halliard sheaves and shipped atop a warship's mast where it remained for the duration of her commission. Such are the happy gleanings of assiduous research!
As for more seminal inspiration, whilst still a teenager I came across six battered volumes of William James's monumental Naval History of Great Britain, which records in meticulous and largely accurate detail every action fought by the Royal Navy during the wars of the French Revolution and Empire. I parted with my pocket money of half-a-crown, a sum which now sounds as archaic as the age of the books themselves, though they had been published a century before my own birth. Astonishingly, most of the pages were uncut.This purchase was to create a lifelong interest in maritime history and to result ultimately in the 'biography' of Nathaniel Drinkwater.
I am aware that when coming to the end of a much-enjoyed book, the reader is often assailed by a sense of regret. Something of the same tristesse hangs over me now as I tap out the last words of the saga.
I have immensely enjoyed writing the series, but every voyage has its ending and Drinkwater exceeded his allotted three score years and ten to die not ignobly. To those of my readers who have shared something of this enjoyment, may I simply express my gratitude. Your support meant the whole tale could be told, and while your precise image of Nathaniel Drinkwater may differ slightly from my own, the substance of his invention is common to us both.
