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WORK TITLE: Harbor of Spies
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1950
WEBSITE: http://www.robinlloyd.org/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
He and his wife divide their time between Chevy Chase, Maryland, and Camden, Maine.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1950; son of Stacy and Alice Lloyd; married Tamara Hall Lloyd; children: two daughters.
EDUCATION:Princeton University, graduated; Columbia University School of Journalism, graduate degree, 1976.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and novelist. NBC News, White House correspondent, foreign correspondent; became independent news producer.
AWARDS:Received four Emmys, National Capital Chesapeake Bay region; also received Overseas Press Club award.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Robin Lloyd began his career as a novelist after years of working in television. “A veteran correspondent for NBC News for nearly fifteen years,” wrote the contributor of a short biographical sketch to the author’s home page, the Robin Lloyd Website, “he filed reports from more than thirty countries, mostly in Latin America and Africa. He covered numerous wars and conflicts including the Iraq war, the Israeli intifada, [and] the Falklands War.” Lloyd is the author of Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain’s Tale, a Novel, and Harbor of Spies: A Novel of Historic Havana.
Rough Passage to London
Rough Passage to London relates the story of the life and early career of an American merchant captain, a man whose life was also celebrated by the nineteenth-century English writer Charles Dickens. “Lloyd didn’t set out to write a novel. In common with many inspired by tales of the past, his main interest was genealogical research,” explained Ani Johnson on the website Bookbag. “The subject, his [third] great … grandfather, began to grow on him, tantalising him with the fact that the sixteen-year-old runaway became eminent enough to count Charles Dickens among his friendships.” The book “is also a tribute,” declared Juliet Waldron on the Historical Novel Society website, “a semi-biographical take on the real-life story of his ancestor, Captain Elisha Ely Morgan.” “Throughout the writing of Rough Passage to London, I struggled with the marriage of fact and fiction. That’s the reason I wrote such extensive Author’s Notes at the end of the book,” Lloyd said in his Bookbag interview. “In those notes, I describe my journey and how I made sense of bringing fact and fiction together to create this novel. What helped me was the knowledge that I had researched his life quite intensively. I felt that I had gone as far as I could in my research. In all likelihood, I felt that I had uncovered what was possible to find out about him.”
By making Morgan the subject of a work of fiction rather than writing a simple biography, Lloyd was able to exercise his artistic imagination to reconstruct parts of his ancestor’s career. Morgan’s “life at sea was largely unknown, specifically the more than one hundred transatlantic voyages he made over a thirty-year period. That was fertile ground for a fiction writer. The only way to tell his story as a sailor and a ship captain was through fiction,” Lloyd explained to Johnson. Dickens, Lloyd stated in his interview with Johnson, “wrote Morgan after completing A Message from the Sea that he hoped this story and his portrayal of Morgan would give his readers some faint reflection of the pleasure I have for many years derived from the contemplation of a most amiable nature and most remarkable man.“
Critics enjoyed the author’s first novel. “Lloyd convincingly traces Ely’s career as a seaman,” said Ron Samul in Library Journal, “moving across the years and marking his advancement.” Rough Passage to London “is enthusiastically recommended reading and would prove to be an enduringly popular addition to community library historical fiction collections,” asserted an MBR Bookwatch reviewer. “Author Robin Lloyd has a genuine flair as a novelist.”
Harbor of Spies
Lloyd’s second novel, Harbor of Spies, is set a few decades after Rough Passage to London. It tells the story of a young American merchant captain named Everett Townsend, who is coerced into breaking through the Union blockade of Southern ports to bring a special cargo to Cuba. “Disgusted with Spanish brutality toward slaves,” stated a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “Everett agrees to spy for the Union,” “The story,” wrote Booklist reviewer Sarah Johnson, “eventually leads him straight into the dark, cruel heart of the Cuban economy.”
Critics had praise for Lloyd’s second novel. “This enjoyable read,” assessed Jeff Westerhoff on the Historical Novel Society website, “offers suspense, fast-paced action, and an engaging protagonist placed in a historical setting. The author paints a rich and colorful picture of Havana.” The novel’s “action is exhilarating, and intrigue beckons on land, too,” declared Sarah Johnson on the website Reading the Past, “with intertwining subplots about a British diplomat’s unresolved murder, a mystery involving Townsend’s late Cuban mother, and his growing affections for an innkeeper’s daughter.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 15, 2018, Sarah Johnson, review of Harbor of Spies: A Novel of Historic Havana, p. 38.
Library Journal, October 1, 2013, Ron Samul, review of Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain’s Tale, a Novel, p. 66.
MBR Bookwatch, January, 2014, review of Rough Passage to London.
Publishers Weekly, January 22, 2018, review of Harbor of Spies, p. 59.
ONLINE
Bookbag, http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/ (April 23, 2014), Ani Johnson, “The Interview: Bookbag Talks to Robin Lloyd;” (March 22, 2018), Ani Johnson, review of Rough Passage to London.
Historical Novel Society, https://historicalnovelsociety.org/ (July 9, 2018), Juliet Waldron, review of Rough Passage to London; Jeff Westerhoff, review of Harbor of Spies.
Reading the Past, http://readingthepast.blogspot.com/ (March 12, 2018), Sarah Johnson, review of Harbor of Spies.
Robin Lloyd Website, http://www.robinlloyd.org (July 9, 2018), author profile.
BIOGRAPHY
Robin Lloyd is a journalist and a novelist. He is the author of two novels, Rough Passage to London and Harbor of Spies. Lloyd has been involved in television journalism for more than forty years, working on camera as both a news reporter on the local and national level as well as a producer and writer off camera. A veteran correspondent for NBC News for nearly fifteen years, he filed reports from more than thirty countries, mostly in Latin America and Africa. He covered numerous wars and conflicts including the Iraq war, the Israeli intifada, the Falklands War, the guerrilla wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, and the struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Lloyd also covered the White House and the State Department during the Reagan and Bush administrations. Later as an independent news producer, he created and produced news programs with foreign networks from Washington and has written documentaries and longer news segments for many outlets, including Maryland Public Television. Among his awards are four Emmys from the National Capital Chesapeake Bay region and an award from the Overseas Press Club.
Personal Life
Robin Lloyd’s early years were spent on the island of St. Croix where his parents, Stacy and Alice Lloyd owned a dairy farm and milk plant. As a boy, he grew up sailing in the Caribbean, and working in the family business. He attended St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire where he graduated cum laude and won the Ambassador Duke Spanish prize. He then attended Princeton University where he majored in Latin American studies and developed a proficiency in Spanish, French and Portuguese. In 1976, he received a graduate degree from the School of Journalism at Columbia University where he was selected as an International Fellow. He is married to Tamara Hall Lloyd with whom he has two daughters. He and his wife, Tamara now divide their time between Chevy Chase, Maryland, and Camden, Maine.
Novels
In October, 2012, Lloyd left the television news world to begin writing his first novel which depicts the life of an American ship captain in the early to mid-19th century. Rough Passage to London, was published by Sheridan House in October of 2014, and was described by Publishers Weekly as a poignant and action-packed first novel. The Library Journal gave it a starred review for its “exciting narrative and historical acumen.” Lloyd’s second novel, Harbor of Spies which is set in Havana, Cuba in 1863 during the American Civil War, is due to be released by Globe Pequot Press in March, 2018.
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Print Marked Items
Harbor of Spies
Sarah Johnson
Booklist.
114.12 (Feb. 15, 2018): p38.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Harbor of Spies.
By Robin Lloyd.
Mar. 2018.320p. Lyons, $24.95 (9781493032266).
Cuba's capital, Havana, a neutral port during the U.S. Civil War, serves as a base for Confederate trade and
plotting and corresponding Union espionage. In Lloyd's (Rough Passage to London, 2013) exciting second
novel, set in 1863, this Spanish-controlled city swarms with activity, from the shipping industry's constant
din to the masquerade dances that serve as an apt metaphor for individuals' covert motives. Everett
Townsend, a 19-year-old American schooner captain, gets drawn into danger after rescuing an escaped
English prisoner. Blackmailed by a Spanish merchant into smuggling cargo through the Union blockade of
the South, Townsend gathers a crew and follows his assignment while pondering his moral quandary. The
shipboard action is exhilarating, and intrigue beckons on land, too, with intertwining subplots about a
British diplomat's unresolved murder, a mystery involving Townsend's late Cuban mother, and his growing
affections for an innkeeper's daughter. The story eventually leads him straight into the dark, cruel heart of
the Cuban economy. This is an involving reading experience for maritime fans and landlubbers alike. One
hopes Townsend's adventures will continue in future books.--Sarah Johnson
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Johnson, Sarah. "Harbor of Spies." Booklist, 15 Feb. 2018, p. 38. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A531171574/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3ced9c38.
Accessed 3 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A531171574
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Harbor of Spies: A Novel of Historic
Havana
Publishers Weekly.
265.4 (Jan. 22, 2018): p59.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Harbor of Spies: A Novel of Historic Havana
Robin Lloyd. Lyons, $24.95 (320p) ISBN 9781-4930-3226-6
Lloyd's second novel, after Rough Passage to London, is a swashbuckling spy adventure set in 1863
Havana, Cuba, that follows Everett Townsend, an American sea captain arrested for sedition. To gain his
freedom, Everett reluctantly agrees to become a blockade runner for a corrupt merchant, supporting the
Confederate cause by using his ship to carry contraband war material to the South and return to Havana
with valuable cargoes of cotton. This is lucrative but dangerous work; Everett evades blockading Union
warships, becomes involved with an old unsolved murder, and discovers British complicity in the Spanish
slave trade that drives the Cuban economy. Disgusted with Spanish brutality toward slaves, Everett agrees
to spy for the Union, putting himself in even more peril and leading the story to a climactic escape
sequence. Everett's family melodrama and a romance plot are also included, but the real draw is Lloyd's
excellent historical detail. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Harbor of Spies: A Novel of Historic Havana." Publishers Weekly, 22 Jan. 2018, p. 59. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525839758/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=64be8574.
Accessed 3 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525839758
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Rough Passage To London
MBR Bookwatch.
(Jan. 2014):
COPYRIGHT 2014 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Rough Passage To London
Robin Lloyd
Sheridan House Publishers
4501 Forbes Blvd., Suite 200, Lanham, MD 20706
www.rowman.com
9781574093209, $24.95, 376.pp, www.amazon.com
Synopsis: Lyme, Connecticut, early nineteenth century. Elisha Ely Morgan is a young farm boy who has
witnessed firsthand the terror of the War of 1812. Troubled by a tumultuous home life ruled by the fists of
their tempestuous father, Ely's two older brothers have both left their pastoral boyhoods to seek manhood
through sailing. One afternoon, the Morgan family receives a letter with the news that one brother is lost at
sea; the other is believed to be dead. Scrimping as much savings as a farm boy can muster, Ely spends
nearly every penny he has to become a sailor on a square-rigged ship, on a route from New York to London
- a route he hopes will lead to his vanished brother, Abraham. Learning the brutal trade of a sailor, Ely takes
quickly to sea-life, but his focus lies with finding Abraham. Following a series of cryptic clues regarding his
brother's fate, Ely becomes entrenched in a mystery deeper than he can imagine. As he feels himself
drawing closer to an answer, Ely climbs the ranks to become a captain, experiences romance, faces a
mutiny, meets Queen Victoria, and befriends historical legends such as Charles Dickens in his raucous
quest.
Critique: A superbly crafted historical novel wherein the author has taken enormous care with respect to
accuracy of detail regarding shipboard life in the early 19th Century, "Rough Passage to London: A Sea
Captain's Tale" is enthusiastically recommended reading and would prove to be an enduringly popular
addition to community library historical fiction collections. Author Robin Lloyd has a genuine flair as a
novelist and will leave his readers looking eagerly toward his next literary effort. It should be noted that
"Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale" is also available in a Kindle edition ($10.49).
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Rough Passage To London." MBR Bookwatch, Jan. 2014. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A355777744/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e5c4066e.
Accessed 3 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A355777744
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Lloyd, Robin. Rough Passage to London:
A Sea Captain's Tale
Ron Samul
Library Journal.
138.16 (Oct. 1, 2013): p66.
COPYRIGHT 2013 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
* Lloyd, Robin. Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale. Sheridan House. Oct. 2013. 342p. ISBN
9781574093209. $24.95. F
NBC correspondent Lloyd draws on family history for his debut historical novel about his ancestor Capt.
Elisha Ely Morgan. The book opens in 1814, when Ely and his brother Abraham witness a British raiding
party torching American boats during the War of 1812. Eight years later, 16-year-old Ely runs away from
the family farm in Connecticut after his family receives a letter stating that his two brothers are lost at sea.
Lloyd convincingly traces Ely's career as a seaman, moving across the years and marking his advancement.
Not only are we taken on harrowing adventures (mutinies, death-defying sea rescues, political intrigue), but
we are given clues as to what might have happened to Ely's brothers. Eventually, Ely becomes a notable sea
captain, sailing across the Atlantic more than 100 times and making friends with such 19th-century
luminaries as Charles Dickens, who is inspired to model his central character in the story "A Message from
the Sea" after Ely. VERDICT This epic seafaring tale comes highly recommended for its exciting narrative
and historical acumen. Lloyd's research and personal connection to the past bring this tale to life, and fans
of Patrick O'Brian will want to add this work to their reading list.--Ron Samul, New London, CT
Samul, Ron
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Samul, Ron. "Lloyd, Robin. Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale." Library Journal, 1 Oct.
2013, p. 66. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A343753798/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d9120185. Accessed 3 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A343753798
Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale, a Novel by Robin Lloyd
Reviewed December 2013
Category: Historical Fiction
Rating: 4/5
Reviewer: Ani Johnson
Reviewed by Ani Johnson
Summary: A 19th century sea faring adventure with plenty of dash as Robin Lloyd fictionally reconstructs a very real ancestor. Robin Lloyd popped into Bookbag Towers to chat to us.
Buy? Yes Borrow? Yes
Pages: 342 Date: December 2013
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 978-1574093209
Share on: Delicious Digg Facebook Reddit Stumbleupon Follow us on Twitter
Elisha Ely Morgan leaves his native Connecticut to go to sea, partially but not entirely to escape his father's Victorian cruelty. There's a second reason: the sea has been blamed for the loss of two of his brothers, the exact circumstances of his elder brother's disappearance never having been clear. But Ely has heard a rumour; a rumour that will take him as far away as London and obsess him for decades. His brother Abraham may not be dead.
Former TV correspondent and producer Robin Lloyd didn’t set out to write a novel. In common with many inspired by tales of the past, his main interest was genealogical research. The subject, his great (x3) grandfather, began to grow on him, tantalising him with the fact that the 16 year old runaway became eminent enough to count Charles Dickens among his friendships. (In fact Dickens wrote a short story based on Morgan's life.) The novel just grew from there and, although Robin admits it's mostly fictionalised, he researched to get the feel and minutiae of the era correct.
There is indeed a feel of authenticity from the beginning as the child Ely and his brother hide while the English burn the local towns in 1812. This continues into the detail of shipboard life, making the novel attractive to the fans of writers like Douglas Reeman while not boring those of us who are happy for the ships' rigging to remain anonymous.
Indeed as we go from section to section in the novel, watching young Ely grow and rise through the 19th century merchant naval ranks we notice the story is practically all set on board. There are some land-based set pieces but we're quickly whisked back to sea (although sometimes we'd rather linger longer) without any doubt about where Ely is happiest. Having said that, 'happy' may be an odd word to apply to the brutal life of a contemporary sailor.
Everything that could happen to our Victorian forebears at sea happens to Ely and his crew at some stage. Robin lays it all before us as we read in grim fascination. We learn about the speed and commercial advantages of the packet ships that took mail and passengers between the US and England. We're faced with the pain, hardship and illness involved with the job spec of those in the crew. In fact we balk at the idea that some sailors actually paid for their working passage in order to be maltreated and face the hazards that not even the commanding officers could predict.
Robin had a clever idea to divide the book into sections: as each begins we look forward to seeing how much older Ely is, what's changed in the intervening years and how much further he's progressed with his obsession to find his brother. Indeed the more it progresses the more of an obsession it becomes.
In his preface Robin modestly hopes that he's acquired some of Ely's story telling abilities. By the time we've reached the end of the novel even the most grudging reader would have to admit that, yes, there does seem to be something in the genes. Personally I hope that there's more where this came from.
I'd like to thank Rowman & Littlefield for providing us with a copy for review.
Further Reading: Other writers have turned their family history into novels just as successfully. For a great example, we heartily recommend The Purchase by Linda Spalding.
Bookinterviews.jpg Robin Lloyd was kind enough to be interviewed by Bookbag.
The Interview: Bookbag Talks To Robin Lloyd
Summary: Ani enjoyed Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale, a Novel by Robin Lloyd and was intrigued by the background to the story. There were quite a few questions she wanted to ask when Robin popped into Bookbag Towers.
Date: 23 April 2014
Interviewer: Ani Johnson
Reviewed by Ani Johnson
Share on: Delicious Digg Facebook Reddit Stumbleupon Follow us on Twitter
Ani enjoyed Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain's Tale, a Novel by Robin Lloyd and was intrigued by the background to the story. There were quite a few questions she wanted to ask when Robin popped into Bookbag Towers.
Bookbag: When you close your eyes and imagine your readers, what do you see?
Robin Lloyd: As I wrote Rough Passage to London, I always had a few of my friends in mind; all were experienced sailors or the armchair variety of sailors who prefer to dream rather than experience the wind and the waves. I wanted to give a sense of the sea, the smells, the motion, the taste, and Ely Morgan’s life was such a perfect opportunity. So even though I ventured onto land quite a bit, as I wrote the book I saw it as a sea novel. The readers I envisioned would be like me, filled with curiosity and wonder about what it would be like to sail the Atlantic on a three masted squarerigger. Oddly enough, I also envisioned Morgan’s English friends, particularly C.R. Leslie and Charles Dickens as the readers. I knew Morgan had captured their imaginations long ago with his sea stories so I always had them in my mind.
BB: You're on record as saying that Rough Passage to London began as research into your family tree. At what stage did it turn into a possible novel and why?
RL: I like to say that Rough Passage to London was a family research project that ran seriously amok. From a planned 6 month long effort it became a five year long marathon. It was like a giant magnet pulling me forward. My original task to myself was simply to find out as much as I could about the man, his time at sea, the dates, the ships and above all, explain how he met all of these famous people in the literary and arts circle of London. That became a self-inflicted, but much-enjoyed research project on the transatlantic Age of Sail in the mid 19th century. I was fascinated by this entire world, the sailors, the passengers and the transition to steam. These sailing ships were, in effect, the first cruise ships. They were the link that tied together the transatlantic world of letters, arts and commerce, not to mention people. I wrote a 300 page rough draft about the man and his times with no intention of doing much more than that. My wife encouraged me to show it to an editor in the publishing world.
He liked the topic but said you don’t have enough material about Ely Morgan. You can either write a history about the packet ship era, he said, or you can write an historical fiction about Ely Morgan. I’d never written any fiction before in my life, but I knew I wanted to write about this man. So with great trepidation I chose fiction. My skill set was as a journalist so a non-fiction book might have made more sense. But I simply could not see how I could capture the man’s personality and his life story with a non-fiction. I wanted to see this world of ships and sailors through his eyes. So like an early explorer, I set out on my largely uncharted voyage, knowing little about where fiction was going to take me. Certainly all the background and research I’d done gave me a foundation to work from, but I oftentimes felt like I had no compass to steer by. It took me two years of solid writing to finish the novel. Editing and rewriting took another year. And most of the original 300 page non-fiction I wrote about the man and his era became extraneous material. As my editor said, most of that is deadwood.
BB: You say in your book notes that the book is a well-researched fictionalised account. Which bits are fiction and which fact? (To make it more difficult – sorry – without spoilers?)
RL: Throughout the writing of Rough Passage to London, I struggled with the marriage of fact and fiction. That’s the reason I wrote such extensive Author’s Notes at the end of the book. In those notes, I describe my journey and how I made sense of bringing fact and fiction together to create this novel. What helped me was the knowledge that I had researched his life quite intensively. I felt that I had gone as far as I could in my research. In all likelihood, I felt that I had uncovered what was possible to find out about him. I had his life chronology at sea, all the family genealogy, the names and details of his ships, the dates when he met C.R. Leslie, the dates when he married his wife. I knew quite a bit about his personality thanks to descriptions of him by C.R. Leslie and Robert Leslie in their books.
The seafaring character in Dickens’s short story, A Message from the Sea was his portrayal of Morgan. So I had a good sense of his character. I also had scattered anecdotes, many of which I used in the book. Some of them were quite funny such as the story of the wet lovers and the dry one. I expanded this delightful story Morgan told Dickens and Dickens loved, and gave it a personal twist. There’s no record to say that it happened this way, but then who’s to say it didn’t? His meeting with Queen Victoria was another example. Several maritime history books recorded this luncheon event on board Morgan’s new ship named in Queen Victoria’s honor. The quote from the Duke Of Newcastle was right from the history books, but the descriptions of the event were my imagination.
In all cases, I respected the history I uncovered. I merely sought to fill in the historical blank pages in his life. His life at sea was largely unknown, specifically the more than 100 transatlantic voyages he made over a thirty year period. That was fertile ground for a fiction writer. The only way to tell his story as a sailor and a ship captain was through fiction. The guidelines I devised for myself was to keep the historical record intact, but through fiction try to bring his character to life by creating imaginary scenes. In many ways, Dickens’s motivation was the same. A fictional story based on an actual man. He wrote Morgan after completing A Message from the Sea that he hoped this story and his portrayal of Morgan would give his readers some faint reflection of the pleasure I have for many years derived from the contemplation of a most amiable nature and most remarkable man.
BB: How have the rest of your family reacted to the book?
RL: Fortunately well. That’s the short answer. A number have said they really enjoyed it. Even the historically minded in the Morgan family have written me favorable reviews. I think perhaps they understand the novel is a way of remembering the man as part of a larger portrayal of a bygone era. As more than one relative has mentioned, the novel puts Morgan in some historical context. Certainly my grandmother who gave me his portrait years ago had little specific knowledge about his personality or his background at sea. Her name was Elizabeth Babcock. She was a good storyteller herself and wrote an award winning children’s book in the 1940’s about English children during the war being rescued by a flying pig from America. I believe the book was called The Inflatable Pig. I asked an older member of the family who knew her quite well if he thought she would have liked the book. Oh, yes, he replied. She would have loved it!
BB: Do you recognise yourself or any of your family's traits in Ely?
RL: I think Ely Morgan was a hard man to duplicate. Charles Leslie described him as a man combining all the various and delightful qualities of the sailor, the artist, the politician and the chess player. I don’t know as I have met a man quite like that. That being said, I found some aspects of his life story I could relate to. The loneliness of being away from family for extended lengths of time. As a foreign correspondent for NBC News, I was oftentimes away from home for months at a time, some years more than three hundred days. My wife was fortunately quite self-reliant, but I couldn’t keep that schedule up for long. Covering the White House became a welcome relief after years of shuttling from disaster to war zone. Those absences helped me portray his loneliness on board ship, and his relationship with Eliza, his wife. Another similarity was that like Ely, I’d also grown up on a farm. I didn’t run away from home, but like him, I was quite eager to look for another life direction. Finally, I suppose it would be fair to say that I felt some commonality with him in that his career and mine were both about communications.
BB: What surprised you the most about Ely's life and times?
RL: Many things surprised me as I began to fill in the details of his early life. The relatively humble surroundings in the Connecticut River Valley, the family’s strong ties to the Congregational Church, the modest but basic education he’d received there. This stood in sharp contrast to his later life as a successful ship captain and wealthy owner of the shipping line.
The life of a sailor was much tougher than I imagined. I had not realized the extent of the hardship, the dangers at sea, and the cruel treatment sailors often received at the hands of the mates; never mind the low pay and the dreadful food. Nor did I realize that these sailors and captains made as many as three round trips across the Atlantic each year, and sailed on schedule no matter what the weather, certainly a grueling schedule hard to fathom.
As far as the times are concerned, I was most surprised at the many travel accounts about America by English writers starting with Captain Basil Hall in the 1820’s, then Fanny Trollope, Harriet Martineau, Frederick Maryatt, Charles Dickens. Many of them were quite uncomplimentary. All this told me that Morgan's journey was all the more exceptional. He’d come up the hard way as a rough and tumble Yankee tar and found friendship in England amongst the most unlikely of friends. Imagining how he accomplished that, gave me the reason for the title, Rough Passage to London. English and Americans then called each other feuding cousins. They both traveled on the same ships so these squareriggers were really like cultural bridges and the Captains like ambassadors expected to smooth over differences and make polite dinner conversation with all. The fact that slavery was such an ever-increasing hot-button issue of discussion between England and America gave me a major theme in the novel.
But I suppose the biggest surprise came from an actual letter dated July of 1816 I discovered in the family records of a distant relative. It was written to Ely Morgan’s mother. The tragic news in the letter would change that family forever. The cryptic wording of the letter gave me the idea for a mystery and a plot line where I could blend and weave the fiction through the known facts. The discovery of that real letter got the novel started.
BB: The life of a Victorian sailor seems incredibly brutal and unforgiving. How do you think you would have managed if you had swopped places with Ely? Would there have been anything you'd have enjoyed?
RL: Well, everything is relative I suppose. Ely came from a rough background with few amenities so it may be that life as a young sailor was tolerable, particularly as he burned his bridges by running away from home. Within the merchant marine, he came up the hard way. I know that he was a simple sailor for five years before he became a second mate. Then it would be another two years before he would become first mate. These would have been tough years where he would have had little time off. That being said, as he’d survived the gauntlet of deck life, it must have seemed like a major accomplishment when he became first mate and then even more so when he became captain. I tried to convey his sense of ambition and quick thinking as best I could. He was advancing through the ranks, and because he was successful it may have made the life of a sailor more acceptable. Endurance and hope propelled him forward. He also didn’t have many choices.
As for me, I think I would have jumped ship. Climbing the ratlines to get 100 feet or more above deck would have terrified me, if not killed me. As far as what I might have enjoyed…. I would have liked to have been the helmsman on one of those ships, sledding downwind under full canvas with a full moon lighting the way, lines taut and straining with a freshening night breeze on my face. Under those fairweather conditions, I might also have liked to be offered one of Captain Morgan’s Havana cigars.
BB: Before you wrote Rough Passage your day job was that of journalist and correspondent. Creative writing is a totally different discipline from the succinct world of journalistic writing. How did you find the switch and which do you prefer?
RL: I would say that fiction writing is quite different, and quite a bit more demanding. A news story is generally written quickly, hopefully understandably. Brevity is important. So is simplicity and accuracy. You want your readers, listeners or viewers to get the main point of your story. That’s the bottom line. The result is that you are telling the reader what you want them to know without too many subtleties. A long magazine article obviously is a bit more complex.
But as a journalist and a correspondent, you basically learn the narrative skill with some description. Fiction, on the other hand, requires not only a demand for good descriptive writing but also the mechanics of driving a story forward and the ability to develop believable characters. Learning how to write conversations if you haven’t done it before is not easy.
I found no problems with the descriptive writing. What I had to learn is how to convey and reveal traits of a character through scenes. I had to learn how to create scenes that would transform characters. I had to learn how to use conversations to move the plot forward. Foreshadowing, use of symbolism and red herrings were a few other skills needed in the fiction writer’s toolbox.
Simply put, fiction writing is far more complex. Which do I like more? I don’t think you can compare them. One is more of a skill learned. The other is more of an art form with several different writing skills required.
BB: Based in your experiences in the writing and publishing process, have you any tips for potential authors reading this?
RL: Well, I’m here to humbly say that I feel extremely fortunate to have found a publisher. Certainly more than a dozen publishers, big and small, turned this manuscript down with little to no explanation offered. I was out wandering in the unpublished wilderness for many months before Sheridan House kindly took a chance with me. They are a maritime imprint so that was part of the attraction. That would be one bit of advice I might give to first time authors. Look for a small publishing house that has handled books with similar themes to your book.
The other bit of advice would be to pay close attention to your first two chapters. They have to be zingers. I discovered this the hard way. Many publishers only want to see the first two chapters of your book. I can’t tell you how depressing it is to be told, Sorry, it’s not for us., and they’ve only read twenty four pages. As a child, my mother used to tell me to never put a book down until I had read at least seventy five pages. Well, those days of more patient reading are long gone.
Finally, I would say have faith in your own story telling ability. Just because someone says they don’t like your book, that doesn’t mean someone else in the publishing business isn’t going to love your book.
BB: What's next for Robin Lloyd?
RL: I’ve been encouraged to write another historical sea novel so I’m keeping that option open. If I do sally forth in that direction, I’ll probably stay put in the 19th century. I’m in the process of researching now. This time I think my main character will be fictional, but the setting and the times portrayed will be quite historical. Look for another suspense mystery, perhaps in the Caribbean.
BB: We look forward to reading that, Robin. Thank you for taking the time to chat to us.
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Rough Passage to London
BY ROBIN LLOYD
On April 7, 1814, two American farm boys go out to see, under cover of darkness, a newly built fighting vessel anchored at Potapoug on the Connecticut River, and become frightened witnesses to a destructive British attack on the town. So begins Rough Passage to London, a story that spans fifty of the early years of our Republic. The brothers, one after the other, escape a dreary situation and run off to what turns out to be an even tougher life at sea. The younger, despite coming in “through the scuppers,” becomes, by the young age of 25, captain of a sailing ship on the Black X line, which ran packets from New York to London. This momentous period saw a flood of immigrants to the new world, as well as enormous social changes, key among them for purposes of the plot, the abolition of the slave trade.
The author, a former NBC News foreign correspondent, brings his reporter’s talents to the novel, which is rich in historical and sea-faring detail, but this is also a tribute, a semi-biographical take on the real-life story of his ancestor, Captain Elisha Ely Morgan, whose trials and temptations must have been many. I enjoyed the story and the historical detail, but the characters are rather two-dimensional, so be advised that this is a well-written, lovingly researched sea “story” which never quite takes off into what I think of as a “novel.”
PUBLISHER
Sheridan House
PUBLISHED
2013
GENRE
Biographical Fiction, Nautical
PERIOD
Early United States
CENTURY
19th Century
PRICE
(US) $16.95
ISBN
(US) 9781574093209
FORMAT
Paperback
PAGES
376
Review
APPEARED IN
HNR Issue 66 (November 2013)
REVIEWED BY
Juliet Waldron
© Historical Novel Society 1997-2018
Harbor of Spies
BY ROBIN LLOYD
In January 1863, a storm forces American captain Everett Townsend to sail his ship reluctantly into the Port of Havana. Before arriving there, he rescues an escaped Englishman from the sea and then helps him locate his friends in Havana. On his return to his ship, Townsend is captured by the police and thrown into jail. He is rescued by a mysterious but rich Cuban merchant and forced to sail to the United States by running the Union blockade. As a former Union Navy man, he is reluctant to participate, but the merchant’s thugs who sail with him keep him from sailing into a Union port.
In this novel of spies—Union, Confederate and Cuban—intrigue and an unsolved murder lead Townsend through 1860s Cuba. He is disturbed by the horrors of slavery and learns more about his mother’s past (she had been born and raised in Cuba before her marriage) while falling in love with a woman living in a Havana boardinghouse.
This enjoyable read offers suspense, fast-paced action, and an engaging protagonist placed in a historical setting. The author paints a rich and colorful picture of Havana during the 1860s. It’s a real pleasure to read as tension builds to an exciting climax. I learned more about Cuba and its relationship with the governments of both the Confederacy and the United States. Caught between both worlds, the Cuban merchants tried to trade and make their fortune with both governments. I wasn’t aware of the harsh conditions experienced by the slaves of Cuba, treated as bad as or worse than their American counterparts in the South. Civil War enthusiasts will enjoy this book, as well as readers who like historical nautical fiction.
Details
PUBLISHER
Lyons
PUBLISHED
2018
GENRE
Adventure, Nautical, Thriller
PERIOD
US Civil War
CENTURY
19th Century
PRICE
(US) $24.95
ISBN
(US) 9781493032266
FORMAT
Hardback
PAGES
320
Review
APPEARED IN
HNR Issue 84 (May 2018)
REVIEWED BY
Jeff Westerhoff
© Historical Novel Society 1997-2018
MONDAY, MARCH 12, 2018
Book review: Harbor of Spies: A Novel of Historic Havana, by Robin Lloyd
Cuba’s capital, Havana, a neutral port during the U.S. Civil War, serves as a base for Confederate trade and plotting and corresponding Union espionage. In Lloyd’s (Rough Passage to London, 2013) exciting second novel, set in 1863, this Spanish-controlled city swarms with activity, from the shipping industry’s constant din to the masquerade dances that serve as an apt metaphor for individuals’ covert motives.
Everett Townsend, a 19-year-old American schooner captain, gets drawn into danger after rescuing an escaped English prisoner. Blackmailed by a Spanish merchant into smuggling cargo through the Union blockade of the South, Townsend gathers a crew and follows his assignment while pondering his moral quandary.
The shipboard action is exhilarating, and intrigue beckons on land, too, with intertwining subplots about a British diplomat’s unresolved murder, a mystery involving Townsend’s late Cuban mother, and his growing affections for an innkeeper’s daughter. The story eventually leads him straight into the dark, cruel heart of the Cuban economy.
This is an involving reading experience for maritime fans and landlubbers alike. One hopes Townsend’s adventures will continue in future books.
Harbor of Spies was published on March 1st by Lyons Press, and this review was written for Booklist's Feb 15th issue.
Some other notes:
- I have to give credit to novels that defy my expectations. Although nautical adventure novels aren't my preferred subgenre, Harbor of Spies is much more than that, as I hope the review indicates. Plus, the action sequences on board ship were genuinely exciting and didn't get bogged down in jargon.
- The British diplomat in question is George Backhouse, a historical figure who was posted to Cuba and mysteriously murdered in 1855.
- The author, Robin Lloyd, was a longtime correspondent for NBC News who grew up "sailing in the Caribbean" (per his online bio).
- For Civil War fiction fans, this novel offers a less familiar perspective on events, which I appreciated. I've been reviewing many novels set in and around this period lately, including Charles Frazier's Varina, and I'll be posting my thoughts closer to that book's publication date.
Posted by Sarah Johnson at 7:00 AM