andy cannon

This is exactly the sort of elevated literary discussion I come here for.

Sure seems to be heading that way!

I love the non-linear time line!

From my perspective I had to lean heavily on what Coleridge called 'the willing suspension of disbelief', unable to completely suppress my 21st century tastes and expectations, but wanting to remain true to the period as much as possible. Diary excerpts are a handy tool, but the diary doesn't respond. A confidant on board the ship would be problematic, and almost anyone on shore presents their own issues. As the story goes on, it gets worse. Every time Jamie and William see each other they are practically humping the masts like dogs while the rest of the crew are equal parts suspicious and oblivious, often in the same conversation. It's a bumpy ride for sure.

Great points! Allowing for hanging the letter up may be hyperbole, Thomas is 18 at this point and perfectly capable of foolish behavior such as publically displaying the letter and then saying he kept it secret from their mother. You are certainly correct that young brothers of that era, or any other for that matter, would not share so intimately, but I wanted Jamie to have an outlet for this thoughts, and I thought Thomas a likely candidate. Maybe the village vicar would have worked better?

The Shoals The Waterfront at English Harbour, Antigua--- Morning The sun had only just lifted past the hills, casting long blue shadows across the yard behind the sail loft. The air still held a trace of last night’s rain, warm, earthy, damp. Tar bubbled in the seams of the boards, and lines hung drying in careful loops from pegs driven into the outer wall. Blake sat on a low barrel, tugging at the frayed seam of his glove. His coat was open at the throat, hair damp from

Let the games begin! Great cast of characters.

A charming, whimsical story told with great imagination and skill.

Lovely little nugget. I enjoyed it a lot.

A really wonderful chapter, very honest convo.

Very nice! Just enough left open that if you want to return to these characters later you have a lot to work with.

So I had to Google him because I'm older than dirt, and as best as I can figure out he makes his rep by trying different hairstyles and posting them on his socials. Do I have that right? Kids today!

That chapter really has the juices flowing! Wow!

Mom's little talk is a gem of fine writing!

I didn't take any computer classes back in the day, but I watched a lot of friends sweating through reviewing two or three hundred cards that constituted a program to perform some simple function, trying to find the ONE comma out of place that caused a crash. I have contact PTSD from reading this!

That cough of Peter's is quite the 'Chekhov's gun in the first act'. I look forward to seeing where this leads!

A charming, funny story about revenge gone right and a binder of plans is no match for real emotions.

Another really fun story. I also laughed at randomly naming a goat 'Lysander.'

When release finally is achieved, I suspect it will look like an all-guns broadside from a man-of-war. Prepare to duck.

Drydock It was like being pulled against your will by something you half hoped would break. The longboats strained at their lines, sailors rowing in steady rhythm, sweat gleaming on their backs beneath the heat. Belle Thérèse drifted forward inch by inch, too grand and ungainly to maneuver under her own power in such narrow waters. The tide offered little assistance, just enough to tempt belief that she moved under her own command, though anyone who knew better could see the truth o

That would be interesting! I fear that Pitt would rather gouge his eyes out than commit the indiscretion of a ménage à trois. At this point in the story, Jamie has eyes only for Pitt, but earlier if someone proposed, "How about a three..." he would have been stripping off his uniform before the "...some?"

You raise some interesting questions. I had not thought much about Huxley's motivation beyond setting promising mids to a task where they would have increased responsibility on a difficult-to-handle ship with fewer hands to man her. He's a wily sea dog who sees more than he lets on, but 75 years away from even a word for queer orientation, would he be able to see two of his crew falling in love? I may be operating under a misapprehension, but I wonder if that wouldn't be as foreign a concept to him as looking in a field and declaring those two stallions are in love with each other? Between the French Revolutionary War and the end of the Regency some 30 years later, there were fewer than 200 executions in the Royal Navy for sodomy, partially because the standards of evidence were so high--- there had to be proof of penetration and of emission(!). Pitt and Blake are always in public locations together and rarely even touch one another. If they ever wander out of the remote regions of the hold with uniforms unbuttoned and hair disheveled, suspicions would erupt, but so far their behavior has been almost pristine. Phillip Adams is wise to them, but he has inside information so to speak and knows that relationships between men can be considerably more complex than just friendship. As far as the accommodations in Antigua, Pitt lied to keep Phillip from knowing where Jamie would be billeted, but then Phillip undoes that secret by telling Jamie where he himself was lodging.

I am glad you are enjoying them! They grew on me as well.

The Approach to English Harbour By the following morning, Lieutenant Pitt was in a foul humour, irritated, restless, and snappish, like a barnacle scraped raw by the tide. His desk lay buried under a flood of reports, manifests, and redundant orders that seemed to multiply each time he turned away. It defied logic how, after a mere week in command, he could already be hopelessly behind. Worse still, he had scarcely glimpsed Midshipman Blake since their last fractious exchange. He had

Another great chapter in this series. Both Hugo and Mike are interesting characters,