CHRIS DURBIN QUESTIONNAIRE
Old Salt
Press, that inestimable publisher of fine maritime fiction and non-fiction,
recently advertised that Chris Durbin, author of the stirring Carlisle and
Holbrooke series, had joined its ranks.
Certainly,
eager readers would like to know more about this fine acquisition, and so I
asked Chris if he would consent to be interviewed for my blog, and he graciously
agreed.
So here
goes.
Chris, not
only are you a true-blue Britisher, raised in South Wales, and retiring
on the south coast of England, but you were apparently wedded to the sea since
childhood. This included not just
crewing the Porthcawl lifeboat, but a week on a topsail schooner. Could you tell us about one of your most
memorable experiences as a young lad at sea?
Well, not
quite a young lad, but during my naval training I saw a mermaid! Now, I know as
well as anyone else that mermaids are just a myth, probably invented by Walt
Disney. Or are they? You be the judge.
As a young
sub-lieutenant, I was sent for a few months experience to a British merchant ship
based at Bahrain that maintained navigation aids – lighthouses and buoys – in the
Persian Gulf. I was to be a bridge watchkeeper and handle the boats and because
of my youth I was known as Chota Sahib (little boss) by the Indian crew.
She was an old ship with a steam reciprocating engine that could send her
racing around the Gulf at… oh, a good eight knots with a tailwind. However,
most of the time was spent on overnight passages from one place to another at a
much more sedate four knots or less. On the night in question I had the middle
watch, on passage between Halul Island and Jebel Dhanna. I was alone on the
bridge wing peacefully watching the stars and the milky way which in those pre-light
pollution days made a spectacular display in the night sky. Then, suddenly, I
had the curious sensation of being observed.
I looked
down to the brilliant phosphorescence around the bows and there was what I can
only describe as a mermaid! She (I say she for convention’s sake, but I
can’t be sure) was riding the bow wave and looking over her shoulder up at me.
I held her gaze for perhaps two seconds until, with a flick of her tail, she
dived under the bow and I saw her no more. I’ve often thought about what I saw.
Was it a dugong, often the source of mermaid misidentifications? But it seemed
to me to have a distinct neck, which the dugong lacks. Was it a swordfish encumbered with discarded
nets? I saw just such a thing a few weeks later, and no, that wasn’t it. To
this day, all I can see is a mermaid, just like the popular illustrations: a
human head and body, long hair and a fish tail. And no, I hadn’t been drinking.
So, I know
there’s no such thing as mermaids, and it must have been something else, surely…
Twenty-four
years in the Royal Navy involved aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates and
minesweepers. Which of these was your
favourite ship? Do you have an anecdote?
I enjoyed
all my ships, but my favourite was the mighty HMS Exeter, a type 42 Sheffield class guided missile destroyer, and my
most fulfilling operational deployment was to the Persian Gulf at the height of
the so-called tanker war in 1988. It was my third spell in the Gulf, but by now
I was the ship’s operations officer, and to a large extent the buck stopped
with me. Much of what we did still can’t be told in detail, so I have no single
anecdote, but let me describe to you the operational environment in the Persian
Gulf in 1988.
Our
principal task was to escort British-flagged tankers between the Straits of
Hormuz and the northern Gulf. We had to counter missile threats from shore-based
batteries, ships and aircraft, as well as small, heavily armed speedboats. And
there was always the potential threat of submarines. There were minefields, as
USS Samuel B. Roberts discovered to
her cost (incidentally, I’ve always been in awe of the way that the American
sailors saved their ship from sinking; it was a valiant and ultimately successful
effort, the fruit of outstanding training and determination-to-win) and there
were ships and aircraft from a dozen nations, some friendly, some neutral and
some decidedly unfriendly.
This made
for a complicated tactical picture that we had to keep our fingers on, every
minute of the day and night. From the moment we entered the Gulf we and our
convoy were under threat, and not only that, we were acutely conscious of the
dangers of accidentally engaging a friendly or civilian unit.
The operations room was a constant hive of activity as reports came in from
radar, sonar, electronic surveillance systems, data links, radio messages,
visual sightings, our own Lynx helicopter and a score of other sources. There
was no let-up until we passed back through the Straits of Hormuz and into the
relative peace of the Gulf of Oman. I learned about mental pressure from that
deployment, and to this day whenever anyone talks about stress in their job, I
say nothing, but remember the Gulf tanker war.
Minesweepers!
Did you get seasick? Have you ever been seasick? And, if so, do you have a pet remedy?
As a
youngster I twice sailed to Scandinavia in the wooden minesweeper HMS Upton and yes, I was horribly seasick in
the North Sea gales; it was no place for delicate stomachs. Luckily, I grew out
of it before I joined the navy. However, I do remember that there are two
phases to the mal de mer: in the first phase you’re afraid you’re going
to die, and in the second you’re afraid you’re not going to die!
And of course,
there’s only one cure: climb a tree.
Retiring
from the navy, I see that you joined a large American company to work in the
aerospace, defence, and security industry.
This must have involved some culture shock. What adjustments did you have to make?
There’s one
huge adjustment that anyone leaving the armed forces must make before becoming
effective in a commercial company, and that is to understand that their job –
whatever their position in the organisation – is to make money for the company.
That may sound simple and indeed obvious, but if you’ve spent a quarter of a
century diligently spending other people’s money, it often takes time to truly
understand that new philosophy. I was fortunate in being given the time to make
the transition.
Now I would
like you to tell us more about your maritime series. Why did you choose the names Carlisle and
Holbrooke? Are they based on real
people, either in fiction or the real world? How did their characters develop?
I’m glad
you asked that! My two principal characters are Edward Carlisle from
Williamsburg, Virginia and George Holbrooke from Wickham in Hampshire. I chose
the name Carlisle by searching the records of the prominent colonial Virginian families,
steering clear of the very well-known ones. Holbrooke was an accident. I was
with my wife (the editor of my books) on our way to the school in Portsmouth
where she was a teacher, and, stuck in traffic, I noticed a street sign:
Holbrook Road. That sounded about right, so I added an ‘e’ and happily appropriated
the name. I thought no more of it until a year later when I happened to stumble
across the story of the person who gave his name to the street. Norman Holbrook
was a first World War submarine commander who was awarded the Victoria Cross for
traversing a minefield to sink an Ottoman ironclad at Gallipoli. Entirely accidentally,
I had chosen a good name.
Neither of
their characters are based on individuals that I have known, but rather they
are an amalgam of all the people that I served with in the Royal Navy and during
my two happy years with the United States Navy and equally happy year with the
British Army. One thing that I’ve learned in researching and writing my novels
is that the technology may have changed since the eighteenth century, but the
people haven’t. My memory is a rich hunting ground for the development of my
characters.
In view of
the fact that you are a fan of C.S. Forester’s Hornblower books, and also
Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series, I find it curious that you have chosen
an earlier era for your setting. Mind
you, it is a favourite era of mine, the time of Anson and “Foul Weather” Jack
Byron, but could you confide your reason for this?
Certainly.
First, I wanted to differentiate my novels from those great authors that you
have mentioned. Make no mistake, I respect their legacies and am inspired by
their examples: I joined the navy because of the Hornblower novels, and my pet
tortoise is named Aubrey! There’s plenty of scope in the French Revolutionary
war and the Napoleonic wars to feed a thousand more stories, but I was
determined to offer my readers something a bit different.
The second
reason is that I have always been interested in the Seven Years’ War (The
French and Indian Wars) and the American War (as the revolutionary war was
known to the British navy.) It was a period of change and rapidly increasing
professionalism, where commissioned officers could no longer leave the
technicalities of their trade to the warrant officers. The navy that stood
victoriously astride the trade routes of the world in 1763 was vastly different
to the one that stumbled ineffectively through the first years of the war in
1755 and 1756. And then, a scant decade or so later, how did it fall so far as
to lose the American colonies? It’s a fascinating period for naval historians
and offers a huge range of incidents that have hardly been touched on by
novelists.
And readers and struggling wannabe
writers always want to know about your daily routine.
Oh, I do
wish I had one. The theory is that I start writing at eight-thirty and continue
through to three o’clock in the afternoon. The reality is that I have five
grandchildren living within half an hour of my home and an unreasonable desire
to go sailing or fishing or walking on the South Downs. Go figure!
Thank you,
Chris. I know my readers will find your
replies as fascinating as I do.
