The Pirates and the Nightmaker is of course a work of the imagination, but I have mentioned in passing and even featured one or two genuine historical events and persons.
The book was prompted by a couple of reviewers who had wondered whether there was any connexion between the original term ‘loblolly boy’ and the invisible flying boy of The Loblolly Boy and The Loblolly Boy and the Sorcerer. One reviewer, indeed, suggested I should write a book to explain how the term arose and this is that book.
An original loblolly boy had one of the worst jobs in the world. He was an assistant to a ship’s surgeon on a naval vessel in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. His job would have been very much as Dr Hatch describes it in the early part of the book. There are various suggestions as to why he was called a loblolly boy. I am most persuaded by the link with loblolly, a form of thin porridge or gruel fed to patients during convalescence. I imagine the boy would have been responsible for making and serving this gruel.
The bizarrely named War of Jenkins Ear did take place mainly between 1739 and 1742, although skirmishes continued until 1748. Jenkins was the captain of an English merchant ship which had been boarded by Spanish coastguards off Cadiz and accused of piracy. In the course of a heated exchange, his ear was sliced off and he was told to take it to the king who would receive the same treatment should he threaten Spain. Some years later Jenkins allegedly displayed his ear before a committee of Parliament and the ensuing outrage provoked the war which largely took place in the Caribbean.
Leading the British naval forces was Admiral Vernon who is referred to in the book. Early on he did attack and capture the Spanish outpost at Portobelo or Porto Bello which was on the coast of present-day Panama.
This victory is commemorated in the Portobello Road in London and in Portobello in Edinburgh among other places, and indirectly in Portobello on the Otago Peninsula.
Vernon then attacked the larger and much better protected town, harbour and forts of Cartagena in New Granada or present-day Colombia on the South American mainland. So confident was Vernon of victory, he struck a medal to celebrate it before the attack was complete and the town taken. Unfortunately he was roundly defeated, lost many ships and the land attack under General Wentworth was stalled in mosquito-ridden swamps, and large numbers of the attackers, both army and navy, succumbed to yellow fever.
The figure I describe in the book of Blas de Lezo was the Spanish admiral who defeated Vernon. In actual fact he did have only one leg, one arm and one eye, the others in each case having been lost in various battles. He was known as Half-man or Peg-leg. As he died of the plague in Cartagena not long after defeating Vernon the encounter in the book could not have taken place, but he was too colourful a character not to use, so I have taken some liberties.
There were many examples of female pirates during this time and before. Such women either disguised themselves as men or were the partners of pirate captains. The most famous of these included Mary Read and Anne Bonny, the latter the partner of Captain ‘Calico’ Jack Rackham.
I have also included the young James Cook, later to become so famous as an explorer and navigator. He was probably about sixteen when he set off for Staithes from Great Ayton, a little older than I would have preferred so I have implied he was younger. However, he was in fact to be given employment in the shop of Mr Sanderson and stayed there for some time before leaving to become an apprentice seaman on the ships carrying coal from the north to London. HMS Endeavour, famous in our history, did begin life as a coal transporter.
All other characters are, of course, entirely fictitious or fanciful in various ways.