Dead Sea began when I joined The Ecologist and was sent a copy of Mark Lynas’ High Tide. This sparked interest in the Pacific and in Tuvalu. Interest which was piqued by reports of ‘The Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ that began to surface at once. I turned immediately to Brian Dunning’s essential Skeptoid website which explained the actual state of the so called ‘garbage patch’. My son, Guy, completing a dissertation on the effect of ecological writing on current American literature, then recommended Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us. Both Mr Lynas and Professor Weisman were kind enough to answer my contacts and their work has influenced the story as it has turned out; though the ‘garbage patch’ as it appears in the closing chapters, and what happens to it in the end, are based on my brother Simon’s experiences as RAF press-liaison officer during the Piper Alpha disaster.
The ‘garbage’ question was made more interesting by the news reports of wreckage from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2011 still drifting across the North Pacific, and, in particular, of the fate of the Ryou-Un Maru. Other books that influenced the final outcome of Dead Sea were Paul Brown’s Global Warming, and Donovan Hohn’s Moby-Duck, the latter particularly because Mr Hohn sailed from Hawaii to the area and dived in it, searching for the garbage.
For once I did not need to approach the Chart and Pilot division of Kelvin Hughes – a long-term standby in nautical matters – for I had the relevant pilots as well as the Rough Guides to all the land-based sections of the story. And I had the Internet. Google Earth allowed me to research every location from Tuvalu to French Frigate Shoals in the finest detail. Detail only rivalled by Mary Gostelow’s Girlahead website which took me into the most exclusive recesses of the Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo, and, through ‘The Gal’s’ experiences, allowed me to learn how to get a PhD in Sushi. Once again, ‘The Gal’ was kind enough to reply to my contact and her adventures became Richard’s.
Liberty’s vessel Flint is based on Plastiki, a vessel made of plastic bottles which has actually sailed across the North Pacific. Liberty herself, as with one or two other characters, has been constructed during a series of negotiations with students at Combe Bank School as part of a project to show how literature can be interactive as well as the result of an individual view. I must also thank two advisors to whom I turn when I need hands-on advice about sailing. Thank you Mike Higgins and Peter Halsor. Every tack and gybe the girls make correctly is down to you. Every mistake is down to me. Finally I must thank my brother Simon and my wife Cham who read and advised at every stage of writing. I really could not have done it without you.
Peter Tonkin, Tunbridge Wells and Sharm El Sheikh