I have been enthralled by the age of fighting sail since I was a boy when I read the Hornblower series and later Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey–Maturin Maturin_series of novels.

I am now working on a nonfiction historical investigation, set  during the Georgian era Royal Navy.

In a recent online discussion people were complaining how one “commander” of a group told some of his people (also O’Brian fans) that this is not “a literary society.”

That got me thinking, and in response I posted, check out all the sailors over the past two or three centuries who followed the track of the Odyssey and how Homer got a lot of it right.

One a slightly more serious note, I have found that on the too rare occasions that I get out on a boat on the BC coast, the old stories that describe the winds, the tides, the landscape and seascape are still relevant today.

One example is the book, Calamity Harbour. It shows the value of the Patrick O’Brian, C.S. Forester and Dudley Pope,fiction books and how they reflect the history, experiences of sailors with real ships, real winds and real tides.

British Columbia sailor and historian Richard Wells, describes the voyage of two small ships, Prince of Wales and Princess Royal to the BC coast in 1787-1788.

The officers and crews were largely RN veterans given special leave to explore and trade in furs. Lt. James Colnett  (a midshipman on Cook’s Resolution) commanded the Prince of Wales, while Charles Duncan on the RN muster roles as Master, commanded the Princes Royal. Of the others on board, significant is the surgeon and naturalist Archibald Menzies (who was the trip’s Stephen Maturin). Both ships from private owners were in poor ship and the book and the models show where the Prince of Wales had to be refitted at where they called Calamity Harbour, on a large island on the BC coast which Menzies named Banks Island for his friend. Wells also built the highly detailed model which is in the Kitimat BC Museum and Archives. The 2003 book was self published and is now quite rare. Colnett’s journals were published academically and the originals are available online.  There are also academic studies of the voyage, Colnett and Menzies.

The BC government official map names site also credits Wells with information on Port Stephens  and Principe Channel 

Wells also wrote A Guide to Shipwrecks Along the West Coast Trail, which is also rare but available in some libraries.