200-Year-Old Insurrection Provides Author Greatest Personal Challenge in Writing Career

June 1797 saw the end of one of the most extraordinary events in English history - the Mutiny at the Nore. Author Julian Stockwin faced his greatest personal challenge when he chose this insurrection as the subject of his latest book.

(PRWEB) May 5, 2004 -- June 1797 saw the end of one of the most extraordinary events in English history -- the Mutiny at the Nore. Author Julian Stockwin faced his greatest personal challenge when he chose this insurrection as the subject of his latest book.

Stockwin, who saw service in the Royal Navy, both as a seaman, and as an officer, says his sympathies were torn - but he knew he had to come to his own personal stand before he could begin writing.

The sailors had serious grievances - but this was also a time when Englands future hung in the balance under threat from the French and the Dutch. My central character Tom Kydd is not my alter ego, but I do see myself in him in many ways," Stockwin says.

Stockwin found material aplenty on the famous historic personae for his writers pen: the mutiny ringleader, flamboyant former officer Richard Parker; Admiral Black Dick" Howe, veteran of the Glorious First of June battle; Prime Minister Pitt, pushed to the edge by events.

But the records hold little of the thoughts and feelings of the men themselves. Most eighteenth- century sailors were illiterate and letters from those who could write are very rare. Stockwin knew his central character, Tom Kydd, would find himself at the heart of things -- and this was the rub. Would he stand for King and Country and thus betray his messmates -- or side with the mutineers? If he raised the Red Flag, his life was surely on the line.

Discontent among sailors at the Nore, a Royal Navy anchorage in the Thames Estuary, just a dozen miles from London, burst into mutiny in May 1797. A previous rising at Spithead had been settled peacefully with a Royal Pardon and some gains for the mutineers. The mutiny at the Nore was potentially more serious as the mutineers went beyond the demands made at Spithead.

When they attempted to blockade the Thames, the country was effectively held to ransom.

Mutiny", the fourth book in Julian Stockwins series of historical naval adventure fiction, is published in the US in June by Scribner.