Let’s Go Fishing by Katherine Pym

Release date July 1, 20017

I wrote “The End” on my first draft of Pillars of Avalon, a story of 17^th century Newfoundland, Canada. When I first started this project, I thought this would be difficult since settlers in the New World struggled to stay alive. They hunted, fished and peeked over big boulders to see if wild savages lurked in the distance, waiting to scalp them. 

How could I write a full novel of almost 95,000 words on episodes of crude survival that would numb the reader over time? It would make them think: Boy, I’m glad I didn’t live then. What a pain!

Then I came upon Sir David & Lady Sara Kirke. They were wine merchants living in London. King Charles I gave David and his brothers carte blanche (in the form of a letter of marque) to pillage and destroy French settlements along the Canadian coast. 

I thought, Oh good. A pirate story. I’ve always liked heroes with a slightly wicked bent. If one is too good, he/she is boring. 

But David Kirke was more than a king sanctioned pirate. While he pillaged and set ships afire along the St. Lawrence River, he was also a businessman. He saw opportunity wherever he went. One of those places was Ferryland, Newfoundland, where the fishing was supreme-o.

Fishing on the grand banks NL with icebergs

Men returned to England after a season along the grand banks and enthused how the waters teemed with fish. The cold waters were so crowded that to breathe, the fish jumped into fishing boats just to get away from the overwhelmingly packed seas. 

London and Dartmouth merchants leased ships of sail and traded goods like wine, clothing, and farm implements from England in exchange for dry salt fish and cod-oil. No money was to exchange hands. To transport money was illegal. Everything was traded, or supposed to be. When you see or read pirate stories, their chests filled with silver and gold coins, (if they are law abiding fellows) the money would have come from Spain or Portugal, France or any port of call in the Mediterranean. 

But I digress: 

Crude Fishing Equipment

Closer Look at one end

Boats with 5 men fished daily in the late spring to early autumn months. They were expected to haul in over 300 cod a day using the most primitive of tools. (In high summer, 1000 fishing boats could be in the water at the same time.) Cod could be as heavy as 120 lbs (54.43108 kg). Nets were apparently not used. Seins were used for the smaller schools of fish, like herring. 

Depending on the day and who did what, a fisherman would use this primitive device to haul upward to 100 fish per day. One would think the hemp line would slice through a leather glove and cut your hand. 

Every day, fish would be brought ashore to be processed. The fish would be gutted and beheaded by men called ‘Headers’. Cod livers would be thrown into barrels for cod-oil. The Header pushed the gutted fish to the ‘Splitter’ who opened the fish and removed the spine.

Notes have come down through the ages how quickly this could be done, up to “24 score in half an hour”.  If a team of gutters and splitters processed fish for 10 hours, that’s 9,600 fish per day—that’s one team. 

After the fish were gutted and salted, they were washed off in sea water, then laid flat on a rocky shore or flake. A flake is a low table covered with pine boughs or such which allow air to pass around the fish and dry uniformly. Boys would stand by, waving a large enough object to keep the flies away since maggots would destroy a dry salt crop.  

Fish Flakes covered with Cod

The calculations are like this: 

In the summer months, a period of 8-10 weeks, a crew of 5 would be expected to catch and cure 200 quintals (quintal=112 lbs or 50.80234kg of salt fish). That is an amount of 22,400 lbs/10,160.47kg of fish in a season. At 11 shillings per quintal (17th century prices), the merchants would garner several thousand pounds sterling per fishing boat per season. If a merchant owned several fishing boats, the numbers are staggering. 

Sir David & Lady Sara Kirke saw the potential and eventually went into the "sack" trade, where goods were traded for fish. They exploited this when they moved to Ferryland in 1638, and by the time of Sara's death in 1684 or 1685, she was a wealthy plantation owner. 

So, that’s one story line, but how many fishing tales are good for a long novel? Well, I found a whole bunch of other stories that filled the breach, which I will relate in another blogspot post. Very exciting.

 PILLARS OF AVALON will be released July 1, 2017. 

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Many thanks to WikiCommons, public domain and

Pictures of fishing lines, page 26, Fish Into Wine, The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century by Peter E. Pope (University of North Caroline Press, 2004

Burning of St Paul’s by Katherine Pym

London burning

Of late there has been a plethora of articles re: the London Fire. The reason for this is we are nearing the 350^th year anniversary of this spectacular event. Books are coming out. We’ll probably see a television special on it, maybe a movie.

If you believe in reincarnation, people who were there will remember it while we are being inundated with its drama. If you believe that memories can be passed down from one generation to another from the genes of our ancestors, if you are in any way related to them who lived through this event, you will remember the horror of it today.

The fire began in the wee hours of Sept 1, 1666 in Pudding Lane. A great wind rose that stoked the fire into a conflagration that did not end until Sept 5.

St Paul’s Cathedral was 2 churches in one. Underneath the grand structure, in the crypt, was St Faith where booksellers and their families worshipped. It was also a storage place for books, paper and printing presses. While the fire consumed the eastern portion of London city, people stored their goods there, expecting the great cathedral’s stout walls would protect them. 

View of London burning from Tower of London

When built 150 years earlier, the roof had been layered with lead, but over the years, holes had been patched with wood to keep out the weather. During the Civil Wars, horses had been stabled in the church. A blacksmith had worked within those vaulted walls, his forge chimney piercing through the cathedral’s lead roof.

In 1663 or so, a committee gathered to repair the old building. The closest they came was to enclose it with a webbing of wooden scaffolding. By Sept of 1666, the old cathedral was a neglected pile of stone. All it needed was a spark to meet its end, and what a spectacular end it was.

Wind whipped the London fire into a frenzy. It burned so hot, the glow and smoke could be seen for miles.  

People fled into the old church because it was stanchion against all adversity. They ran with what they could carry on their backs and huddled within the nave. Tuesday, as night fell over the burning city, the worst was yet to come.

“The pall of black, oily smoke over the city grew more and more dense, forming clouds so thickly charged with particles that a thunderstorm broke out, but it was unlike any storm the watchers... had ever seen. Out of the lowering pall of smoke, lightning began forking down around St Paul’s, the bolts stabbing into buildings that already were ablaze. The peals of thunder were lost in the roar of the flames and screaming of the wind...” ^{pg 134 Great Fire of London}

“The dry timber forming the roof above the stone vaulting burnt furiously... Large parts of the roof, both stone and burning timber, fell in, and the Cathedral became a roaring cauldron of fire...” ^{pg 177 The Story of London’s Great Fire}

The choir loft crashed into the vaults, causing the floor of the cathedral to collapse.  Tombs split open, their contents furiously burning.  Walls burst apart like cannon torpedoes, and the massive lead roof melted, pouring off the sides of the walls like silver rain.  It covered everything in a silver sheen before running in molten streams down London streets. 

Ludgate burning w St Paul's in the background

The next morning, a man named Taswell walked through the smoking ruins of London to Paul’s Cathedral. “The ground was so hot as almost to scorch my shoes; and the air so intensely warm that unless I had stopped... I must [would] have fainted... I perceived the metal belonging to the bells melting; the ruinous condition of the walls; whole heaps of stone of a large circumference tumbling down with a great noise just upon my feet, ready to crush me to death.” ^{pg 181 The Story of London’s Great Fire} 

Flames still burned from St Paul’s 48 hours later. Those who had sheltered in there slept with dead in their vaults. Piles of stone cooled under a sheathing of lead. It covered ancient relics in silver relief, reminders of the cathedral’s better days.  

The city hissed and smoked for weeks after. Over the months, spontaneous explosions would burst from cellars where the fire had never stopped smoldering.

Yes, we’ll see more of this in the coming weeks, but I don’t know if the extent of the calamity will ever be felt by those glued to their seats. Only those whose memories have drifted through the eons to this moment will really know what it was like.

Map of the destruction

Many thanks to:

Wikicommons, Public Domain

 

Bell, Walter G. The Story of London’s Great Fire, London 1929

Hanson, Neil. The Great Fire of London in that Apocalyptic Year, 1666. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New Jersey, USA. 2002

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Coming August 7th, Pre-Order available now.

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Memories Taste of This ...by Sheila Claydon

Typing The End is the best and the worst part of finishing a book.  I've just done that, which means I'm about to say goodbye to Miss Locatelli. One more check when the manuscript comes back from the editor and then it will be out there. The thousands of words I've wrestled with for the past few months won't belong to me anymore, they'll belong to my readers.

The fact that all those words have finally been shaped into a story I'm happy with, is, of course, the best part. Seeing it published is pretty good too. So what is the worst part? It's saying goodbye to the characters I've lived with for so long, and it's saying goodbye, too, to the memories.

Miss Locatelli is set in London and Florence which are both places I know quite well. I worked in London for a number of years and lived a short rail journey away for even longer. In Florence my Italian friends took me to every corner of the city as well as the surrounding countryside when I visited them, so using both places as a background was easy. The difficult bit was the editing because Miss Locatelli is a romance not a travelogue. For me it was also a trip down memory lane.

My hero and heroine visited places I hadn't expected to see again and they let me choose what they were going to do each day as well. I was also allowed to decide what they ate, which was wonderful because I love Italian food. One of their best and happiest meals was roasted eggplant with tomatoes, so if you want to experience a little of their life, here is the recipe.

1 large eggplant cut into cubes
4 large plum tomatoes cored and quartered
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons Sherry wine vinegar
3 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

Preheat oven to 450F/230C.  Toss eggplant and tomatoes with oil and vinegar, then spread out on overproof dish. Sprinkle with most of oregano plus black pepper and sea salt. Stirring occasionally, roast for between 30-40 minutes until eggplant is tender and golden brown. Transfer to serving dish. Sprinkle with feta and the rest of the oregano. Serve with stuffed zucchini and a large glass of chilled white wine.

Enjoy!

Now, meal eaten and the journey through my memories complete, I'm saying goodbye to Miss Locatelli and the whole cast of characters who were part of her story. So what is next? A new book of course, and this one will probably include a bit of time travel as well.

You can find more of Sheila Claydon's books at

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17th Century Whitehall, Part 2, by Katherine Pym

Whitehall Palace

Previously, I told you the history of Whitehall Palace, its beginnings and its end. Today, I want to talk of the structure, and how London’s activities affected Whitehall Palace.

Part II, Other stuff about Whitehall:

Castles have a tendency to be drafty, and it was no different with the Palace of Whitehall. Due to the compilation of various buildings crammed together, the palace was more drafty than normal. During storms, winds whistled down chimneys and spread ash across the chambers. Fires sparked, then smoldered.   

London and its suburbs used sea coal and brown coal to heat their homes. It was inferior and smoked. London also seemed to have existed under a pall of inversion. Smoke and pollution hung stagnant over the city and its suburbs for weeks on end.

Coal was used to brew ale or beer. Dyers used coal to heat water. Soap boilers manufactured their product with ash. Glass houses, founders and most industries used coal for their fires and their products. As a result, smoke settled heavy on everything with a gritty dust. Not a good place for asthmatics, the air was hard to breathe.

John Evelyn (1620-1706) loved London. He observed everything within and without the great city.

In 1661, he wrote Fumifugium: or, The Inconvenience of the AER, and SMOAKE of London Dissipate, a diatribe of the damages smoke can do to a person, city, and anything alive. In this pamphlet, he also proposed remedies for this damage. This, he gave to King Charles II in the year of his coronation (1661).

A visit to Whitehall provoked Evelyn to write this pamphlet. While he strolled through the palace, looking for a glimpse of His Royal Majesty, Evelyn said, “a presumptuous smoke issuing from one or two tunnels near Northumberland House, and not far from Scotland Yard, did so invade the Court that all the rooms, galleries, and places about it were filled and infested with it, and that to such a degree, as men could hardly discern one another for the cloud...”

Apparently, the smoke was so thick in the palace, people had to stretch their arms to make it from room to room. I can imagine with the uneven floors, bridges, and stairways that linked strange floor levels, this could be dangerous.

Alleged Whitehall Floor-plan

Evelyn continues, “...upon frequent observation, but it was this alone, and the trouble that it must needs procure to Your Sacred Majesty, as well as hazard to your health…” Yes, wandering a palace so filled with smoke, it would be difficult to breathe, to see without your eyes tearing.

In 1662 a strong storm hit London, and Whitehall was not spared. A few fires started but fortunately, they were doused without any real damage. After this, regulations were enforced to have at each hearth a leather bucket filled with water.

In 1691, Whitehall nearly burned down. By this time, it was a maze of complexity, and the largest palace in Europe. On April 10^th of this year, a fire broke out that damaged a great deal of the structure(s), but not the State Apartments. By this time, William III and Mary II lived most of the time in Kensington Palace.

Then, in 1698 what remained of Whitehall burned, along with many treasures garnered over the ages. Among other treasures, scholars believe Michelangelo’s Cupid, the Portrait of Henry VIII, and Bernini’s marble bust of King Charles I were all lost.

John Evelyn wrote: “Whitehall burnt! Nothing but walls and ruins left.”

Can you imagine the stories those old walls could have told, so rich, historical, and so often tragic?

Many thanks to the following sources:

Adrian Tinniswood. By Permission of Heaven, The true Story of the Great Fire of London. Riverhead Books, NY, 2003

John Evelyn. Fumifugium: Or, The Inconvenience of the AER, and SMOAKE of London Dissipated. Together With some Remedies humbly proposed by J.E. Esq; To His Sacred MAJESTIE, and To the Parliament now Assemble. Published by His Majesties Command. London 1661

http://www.hrp.org.uk/learninganddiscovery/Discoverthehistoricroyalpalaces/thebuildinghistories/BanquetingHouse/WhitehallPalace

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