I believe some background on the fictional hero of the Honor Series, Peter Wake, might be helpful for both new and longtime readers. Wake was born just east of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, on 26 June, 1839, to a family in the coastal schooner trade, and he went to sea full-time at age sixteen. He volunteered for the U.S. Navy in 1863, at the height of the Civil War, and his career lasted until 1908. He married Linda Donahue at Key West in 1864; the couple’s daughter, Useppa, was born at Useppa Island, Florida, in 1865; son Sean, at Pensacola in 1867.
After serving as a deck officer for sixteen years, Wake began his intelligence work while observing the War of the Pacific on South America’s west coast from 1879 to 1881. He then joined the newly formed Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) in 1882. As one of the few officers who was not a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, his career path was without major ship commands, and he remained in ONI for the next twenty-six years. Most of his efforts were for the clandestine Special Assignments Section (SAS), which worked directly for the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation (parent command of ONI) until 1889, and subsequently for the Assistant Secretary of the Navy himself. There has never been any record of the SAS’s existence.
The first six novels in the Honor Series were told in the third person, but in the 2009 novel, The Honored Dead, a fascinating discovery was described: Wake’s collection of memoirs were purportedly found in the spring of 2007 inside a 124-year-old, ornately engraved, Imperial Vietnamese trunk, hidden away in the attic of a bungalow on Peacon Lane in Key West. It was owned by Agnes Whitehead, who had recently died at age ninety-seven. There has been much speculation among Honor Series fans about Agnes Whitehead, her relationship to the Wake family, and how she came to possess that special trunk. With each novel after The Honored Dead, another facet of that puzzle is revealed.
The individual accounts in the trunk (more than a dozen were found) were typed by Wake himself in the 1890s and early 1900s, usually a few years after the events within occurred. Each contained an explanatory letter to his son (who became a naval officer) or daughter. Wake did all this because he wanted his children and their descendants to understand what he endured and accomplished in his career, since the official records of most of it were sequestered in the ONI vault in the State, War, and Navy Building, now known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. A note in the trunk requested that none of the material be made public by the family until fifty years after the death of his children. Sean died in 1942; Useppa, in 1947.
Sean Rork, an Irish-born boatswain in the U.S. Navy and best friend of Wake, served with him in the naval service until 1908 and shared ownership of Patricio Island, on the lower gulf coast of Florida. He was eight years older than Peter, and Sean Wake was his namesake.
This volume of Wake’s memoirs was written in 1896, eight years after the events in the account. It must be explained here that Wake was a product of his times, and his descriptions of people and events may not be considered “politically correct” in a modern context. He was, however, also remarkably tolerant and culturally astute, and his political observations were usually proven accurate. Much of his rather arcane academic knowledge was gained through an international network of intriguing individuals met during his assignments, with whom he kept a lasting correspondence. Few military men of the period had as diverse a selection of intelligence sources as Peter Wake.
I have corrected only the most egregious mistakes in Wake’s grammar and have kept his spellings of foreign words, though they may be debated by twenty-first-century scholars.
An important note about this novel: After finishing a chapter, I strongly suggest that readers peruse that chapter’s endnotes at the back of the book, where they will find interesting background details I’ve discovered while researching this project. My goal is to educate as well as entertain.
Thus, with the Honor Series, we have the unique opportunity to see inside the events, places, and personalities of a critical period of American and world history, through the eyes of a man who was there and secretly helped make much of it happen.
Onward and upward . . .
Robert N. Macomber
Twin Palm Cottage
Matlacha Island
Florida