Mark Arbour

"I've been to the edge, then I stood and looked down.." Van Halen. You're right, they're at the edge of the abyss. You don't have enough patience for me to build up the Martin-Will battle anymore. ;-) This was already a very long chapter, and I would have had to extend it to cover that. Seriously, I think this will work out better in the end. Trust me.

October 14, 2000 Malibu, CA Will I’d spent the night planning for the worst, taking my dad’s words at face value. I got it now; I understood exactly what they were doing. They didn’t give a shit about whether the whiskey was mine or not, they were just using that as an excuse to bring a total crackdown on me. They’d hired this new guard, and he was going to try to turn my life into a nightmare. There was no way I was putting up with that, with living in a concentration camp. It p

FYI: Chapter 31 should post sometime tomorrow, probably in the morning.

We don't really know who Llywellyn's father is, other than he is an industrialist, and that Caroline invested money into his foundry. We don't know what happened to Brookstone. It's probably that the Admiralty reassigned him after Belvidera was paid off. You're correct about Winkler, in that we don't know if he'll be there or not, but Granger is presuming that he will, or if he isn't, he'll have another servant who can fill the void and sleep there. Good suggestions. Quite frankly, I have no idea how they dealt with rust, or with filtration. I suspect they felt lucky to be able to drink water, period, even if it was nasty.

The other thing to consider is that while an earl would have precedence over a viscount, for example, that doesn't necessarily mean that the earl would be more influential or powerful than the viscount. It just means that the earl gets to walk into the House of Lords first at the State Opening of Parliament. (I'm sure there are a few other things too. ) This was even more pronounced on the Continent, where the actual title was much less important than the family name.

That was really well put. Add to that the worry about Granger's potential enemies and detractors, as well as those of his father, who will look askance at any reward being given to someone they perceive to be an enemy. Jealousy and backbiting were very much a part of the Royal Navy of the time, especially since commands, promotions, and assignments were largely meted out to those who had influence. George has a basic modesty that adds to his charm, and makes things like a peerage, which some would assume, seem totally surprising to him. I think much of that stems from the fact that he doesn't really have to ask for anything (as opposed to Nelson, who was quite vocal about what he thought were reasonable rewards), other people fight those battles for him. He's the golden boy who gets to remain oblivious about backroom machinations, because the earl or Caroline or his other friends are back there pulling levers for him. If Granger were made a peer, he could become Lord Granger, or Lord Somethingelse (picking a geographic title). He wouldn't be Lord George Granger. Having his first name in the mix would only have been used if he was the younger son of a marquess or a duke. Lord Henry Paulet, for example, a Royal Navy officer at the time, was the younger son of a marquess, and was titled that way. We'll see if Fletcher turns out to be good or evil. I'm actually stretching history here with the iron water tanks. They wouldn't become standard Admiralty issue until the early 1810s, but they were used in experimental applications as early as 1796. Giving Granger a peerage wouldn't mean that the King was granting him land, although in the past that had been done. The first Duke of Marlborough, for example, was given an expansive grant of land and a sizeable award of cash from Parliament to build Blenheim Palace. It's more likely that the peerage would be granted based on the land and wealth that Granger already possesses.

That's tough to do for Clifton. It's not easy to defy your father when he's so powerful.

I think sending Arthur to the Indies is an ill-conceived solution to a troubling problem. I think Granger may end up with the unpleasant side-effects.

Well, the ship is named "Bacchante", so one would assume wild, frenetic sex would break out at some point. ;-)

Some would say that's a good thing, and remind me of Jeff Hayes in "1968". Bite me, Adam. Seriously, transporting those men around the world presents a unique challenge of it's own. Wow.

There's no "coming out" in those days. There were some who were rich and powerful enough to avoid being completely ostracized, but that wasn't possible in the navy. BTW, if Calvert did show up and join Granger's ship, it would be a significant demotion for him, but he'd have the seniority to serve as first lieutenant.

I try to make all the various constituencies happy. ;-)

It is beginning. I would assume that such a summons would cause a lot of anxiety and excitement. The Earl of Bridgemont isn't worried, so I wouldn't be either. ;-)

April 7, 1797 For all of his exalted titles, Captain the Honorable Sir George Granger, Knight of the Bath, stood in the bowels of his ship, HMS Bacchante, looking most ungentlemanly. Granger was wearing trousers and a shirt, and if one overlooked the excellent cut of that shirt, and the high quality of the cloth of the trousers, one could almost be persuaded that he was an ordinary seaman. He was standing with his heel on the keel of his ship, looking up through the w

An interesting slide show on this topic in the Huffington Post.

Yep. What you said.

I think guys like Ryan all have their own hangups about intimacy and what bothers them. As for Brad and Robbie and moral authority, I think 'moral' is a subjective quality, not necessarily an objective one. What is moral for you may be immoral for me, or vice-versa. I think in this case the lack of respect has more to do with emotional abandonment; on both sides of the conflict.

And that is simply spot-on.

Good point, but Will wouldn't blow their skeletons out of the closet. He's too family oriented to go there. At least for right now. Both Stef and Wade would be huge brakes on him if he did anything like that.

LOL. The Jones reference probably works better in Odyssey. :-)

Next chapter, you get your wish.

I think you should give Will more credit than that. He's a really smart guy, and I think that his brains and wits will keep him safe, more or less. Thanks for sharing that. Not only was it interesting, it hit on some of the things I was trying to raise here. I think that if Will and his parents are that pig-headed and stubborn, a rift like you describe is entirely possible. I do think, though, that they would ultimately reach an epiphany before it got as bad as things did with your family, at least over the long haul. I think that it helps to think of this as a massive power struggle. In that regard, Brad and Robbie are probably completely clouded by the need to bring Will into line. They're probably thinking that he's turning into a college student at 14 (with the drinking on the trip, and at Stanford), and that in order to prevent him from totally becoming a burnout, they have to snap him into shape. So where did I learn to channel these people who lose sight of what's important? Well, I've written Will to be a lot more responsibly than my own son, and I've written Brad and Robbie to be a lot worse than I was, but I actually lived something like this, although I didn't hire a marine. That's the big point of departure here, but it makes the story more fun. :-) To be honest, I'm not sure how I would even tie that together, with some big overall dramatic purpose. I can see that as well. I do think that JJ could have done a better job with it, though. He could have enjoyed it a little more subtly.

If memory serves, Will only took off half a day to go see JJ skate. That's not exactly stretching their policies very far.

I think Brad's in a really tough situation, because he's totally unable to divorce the underlying power struggle here with what's really happening underneath that.

I remember some massive fights with my father, and conversely with my own son. What strikes me so strongly in retrospect is how easy it was to forgive and to be forgiven.