The Thomas Kydd series brings the eighteenth century to life with a wonderful stage of characters - both at sea and ashore. Here’s a selection from the books...

Thomas Kydd is the central character of the series and was born in June 1773 in Guildford, Surrey, a small country town, 40 miles from London. Kydd’s name was chosen by his parents to honour Thomas Paine, who they had met. They admired Paine’s independent philosophy, although later they would come to frown on his radical thinking.

After attending the local dame school, Kydd joined his father in the family business, a wig-making shop in the High Street. It was painstaking work and business was suffering from a decline in fashion for wigs, but Kydd was not really unhappy with his lot. He knew no other life.

His world would soon change irrevocably – in a lightning raid on a local tavern on February 8, 1793, he was snatched away by a press gang, and forced to join the great fleet at the anchorage of the Nore. At first Kydd was bitter and angry at his fate, but he eventually takes up the challenge to become a true seaman, finding a special affinity with the sea.

Nicholas Renzi Kydd’s tie-mate, a special friend. High-born and enigmatic, in an act of expiation for what he considers a family sin, Renzi sentences himself to a period of exile at sea, on the lower deck. It is a harsh life for someone of Renzi’s background.

Tobias Stirk hails from Hythe, and a fishing family. He became impatient with the back breaking work of fisherfolk with their small boats on the rough shingle, and disappeared into the notorious Romney Marsh to join a smuggler’s crew. His luck ran out when he was caught by the press gang in the last year of the American war. However he took to the life and volunteered for the Navy on discharge. His talents as a gunner were noted in Alcide in action on the Barbary Coast and again in San Fiorenzo in the West Indies. After a spell in the sloop Terrier in Burma he returned to England to serve (ironically) in a Revenue cutter looking for Cornish smugglers. He was transferred into Duke William for service in the North American station but at the likelihood of war with the French she was sent to England and the Nore.

Joe Bowyer befriends Kydd shortly after he arrives in Duke William, and although he is killed in a tragic fall from the mast, his sea ways and beliefs have a profound and lasting influence on Thomas Kydd. Joe’s father, a London drayman, disappeared when he was eight. His mother could not cope with her five children and Joe was given up to Jonas Hanway’s Marine Society. There he was properly clothed and with rudiments of education was sent to sea, where he spent the rest of his life. His first ship was the twelve pounder frigate Arethusa and he began his career as the gunner’s servant. He was eager to please and did well, coming to love the sea life. Later he signed up for three voyages to India with the Honourable East India Company, their near-navy discipline and seamanship serving him well for the future. Hearing of James Cook’s voyage to discover the North-West passage, he managed to ship aboard Resolution for a stirring voyage of exploration. Cook was killed by natives on the homeward voyage. Nine years later he was a topman in the First Fleet, the voyage that ended with the settlement of Botany Bay and the nation of Australia. He served in Supply and other store ships that sustained the new-born colony until war with France threatened, when he was taken into Duke William.

Ned 'the Songbird' Doud We first meet Doud, “a wiry, perky young man” in Kydd, when it’s his turn to collect the evening meal of pease pudding and Irish Horse. Edward Doud was of Kydd's age, but of a very different origin. Born at Pegwell in Kent, into a fisherman’s family, he was out in a spritsail bawley, stowboating whelk and whitebait before he could walk. His songster’s gift he ascribed to his father who would keep his large family entertained in the whitewashed stone cottage during endless winter easterlies by singing age-old songs of the country and the sea. With the Downs and its busy anchorage within sight it was to be expected that young Ned would find his calling on the sea and so it proved: at the age of 12 he went to sea in a timber trader to the Baltic, and did well, but was cast away in the Kattegat in the great storms of 1792. He then signed on for a voyage to the West Indies, but at Madeira was pressed into the Navy at the outset of war by the homeward bound Duke William and rated able seaman.

Wong We first meet Wong in chapter two of Kydd; he’s the first Chinaman Tom Kydd has ever seen. Born second son of a minor mandarin to a favourite concubine, Ah Wong, real name Wong Hay Chee, seemed destined for a life of cultured ease in Kwangchow (Canton). However the accession of Emperor Chien Lung to the Dragon Throne was accompanied by social upheavals in distant provinces; his father was disgraced and committed suicide. His mother took the lively five-year-old into the safety of the countryside, but the dreary back-breaking labour broke her spirit and she died. Ah Wong was left to a childless rice farmer, where he endured his unhappy circumstances with uncomplaining stoicism. Unusually well-built, “Little Buddha”, as he was called, would impress his friends with his raw strength, and when a travelling circus passed through, he joined to become a strongman. After three years, bored with the same routines, Wong was easily tricked into shipping out in an opium trader to India. The clean and settled sea life appealed with its attractions of comradeship and adventure, and when the ship arrived to await the new-season crop, he had no hesitation in signing on in a homeward bound East Indiaman. Cast ashore on arrival in an uncaring London, he was easy meat for the press-gang at the outbreak of war, and quickly found himself with new messmates in the 98-gun Duke William. Only later, in the crack frigate Artemis, does Wong eventually return to Canton but he’s tight-lipped about his past which puzzles his shipmates.

Kydd's mother Fanny Kydd, as the daughter of a Guildford miller, did well to marry Walter Kydd, the eldest son of the owner of a small wig-making shop, which they duly inherited. Kydd’s mother is diminutive, but sharp-tongued, and being an ardent admirer of Wesley, she often felt called upon to reprove her strong-willed son Thomas. He and Cecilia, however, owe their spirited dispositions to her own innate sense of fun. Since moving from the tiny shop in High Street to the Kydd school, with its more spacious house, she gets much satisfaction from her herb garden. And now more socially acceptable, Fanny sadly bores her new friends with eccentric accounts of her son’s exciting adventures on the rolling deep.

Bunce and Weems Ralf Bunce and Scrufty Weems, disguised as lascar stevedores, first make their appearance in Chapter 6 of Artemis. Kydd takes pity on the ex-soldiers and hides them in the forepeak. Bunce and Weems come from the rich, flat countryside around Ipswich in Suffolk. Both were agricultural labourers, always seen together in town enjoying an ale on market day. When war was declared, a splendid recruiting sergeant and strapping drummer boy paraded up and down the high street before setting up outside a tavern. Gaping at the sight and thrilling at the stirring tales of glory, Bunce and Weems took the King’s shilling and became redcoats.It wasn’t bad at first; with the successes of the Revolutionaries, Britain was forced to fall back with its soldiers to its island fastness. But her overseas possessions needed protecting, particularly India, and the two friends found themselves at sea with their regiment on the long voyage to Calcutta. They found it quite different to what they had anticipated – the dusty boredom of the cantonment and the ferocious heat with the squalor and danger outside. Deciding to desert, they slipped away and discarded their uniforms. Hazily aware that the sea was southward, they didn’t realise it was over 100 miles distant. Begging and stealing their way, they eventually found an English frigate at anchor in the Hooghly and bribed a foreman of lascars to get them aboard. The Captain agrees to take the men on as replacement crew

Quashee In Chapter one of Artemis, Kydd joins his mess and is introduced to Quashee: “If yer wants to raise a right decent sea-pie, he’s your man...” Quashee’s ancestors were Akan-speaking Ashanti, sold into slavery by Arabs and eventually brought to Jamaica. A revolt by a kinsman, Cudjoe, resulted in a treaty with the British that established the Maroons, escaped slaves who had set up their own settlements in the mountains, as free people.Quashee’s easy nature came from his family; his mother was renowned for her peach-fed iguana while his father’s talent at gaily decorated yabba pots and gourds ensured they would not have to toil for long in a grung (smallholding).

As a young man Quashee tired of the posturing of the proud Maroon youth and shipped out in a coaster trading with Charleston in the US. There, to his dismay, he was several times mistaken for a notorious escaped slave, and to avoid this had to sign on as a cook in a humble Honduran mahogany drogher. War came to the Caribbean, and the Port Royal naval base filled with men-o’-war. Quashee was quite taken with the pomp and ceremony, and offered his services to a large frigate where he was told that a cook in the Royal Navy was a warrant officer, but that if he volunteered as a landman he would soon make a fine sailor. The frigate sailed for home and paid off in England, her company turned over into Duke William.

Caird In Seaflower, we first meet Zachary Caird as he leads the small dockyard party to inspect the storm-damaged Trajan when she arrives in Antigua.

Born and brought up in Wapping, the boy Caird was no stranger to the colourful world of docklands around the great Pool of London, the biggest port in the world. Thrilled by tales of the seven seas told by seamen from every corner of the globe, he longed to go to sea. But his hard father, a brewery drayman, swore that Zachary should not be a common sailor but have a proper trade, and Zachary was bound apprentice to the Royal Dockyard in Deptford.

The lad promised his father he would not disappoint him. There were many temptations, but he always kept faith. After his apprenticeship was over and he started work as a shipwright’s sidesman he continued his habits of moderation and self-control, unusual among his hard-bitten workmates. 

As a journeyman shipwright he had occasion to repair a Bethel – a floating chapel for seamen. There, he was touched by the selfless devotion of the lay workers. Later, he answered a need for skilled craftsmen for the dockyard at Antigua in the Caribbean, and among the slaves in this exotic locale, he, too, found himself called to become a lay preacher.

Jarman William Jarman was born at Durham, England, and was witness to its rapid rise as a centre for winning coal, the fuel for the infant industrial revolution. As a young man he quickly saw there was more adventure in the coal trade at sea and became an apprentice in The Three Brothers, a London collier. There, he learned the ways of the sea in the hardest trade of all, rising to mate of the small vessel. 

In London, Jarman was fortunate to secure an ocean-going post in an East Indiaman, Windsor Castle. He relished the slow but dignified voyages around the Cape to India, and in her, learned more of deep-sea navigation – perusing John Hamilton Moore’s sailing directions and other tomes, wielding an octant for the first time and absorbing the mass of sea knowledge necessary to advance in the profession.

When he felt ready, he entered for master at Trinity House. The Elder Brethren had responsibility for issuing certificates of competency for master for the Royal Navy, which was gained through examination. Following his success in this, Jarman was offered his first appointment in the King’s Service – sailing master of the topsail cutter Seaflower.

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Thomas Kydd

Nicholas Renzi

Tobias Stirk

Joe Bowyer

Ned Doud

Wong Hay Chee

Mrs Fanny Kydd

Bunce and Weems

Quashee

Master Shpwt Caird

Sailing master Jarman