Do the locations inspire the story, or does the story give meaning to the locations? I am not sure, but the places in my new book, Gulf of Lions, are certainly very central to the plot. When I visit somewhere evocative, I often wonder how it would have been in the past, and how characters from my books would have experienced it.
Gulf of Lions starts in Wapping, East London. The Grapes, a pub, is central to the story. Set in a riverside street lined with warehouses which in former days were served by ships lying alongside, taking the ground at low tide, the pub could hardly be more evocative, and when I look out of its windows I’m reminded of the advice given to Joseph Conrad by a London berthing master “Haul ’em round, Mr. Mate! If you don’t look sharp, you’ll have your topgallant yards through the windows of that ’ere warehouse presently!”
HMS Oleander soon finds herself in Lezardrieux, in Brittany, a narrow, rocky, tree lined estuary, beset by fierce tides. We laid Mitch, our former boat, a 31 foot Mitchell Sea Angler, up in this pleasant town for a winter, before travelling along the coast of Brittany, following Oleander’s path through the Chenal du Four and the Raz de Sein, though the weather for Mitch’s passage was much better than for Oleander’s.
Like Oleander, Mitch paused briefly in the Basque Roads, leaving by the Pertuis d’Antioche with the surf beating on Point Baleen.
Mitch went along the Canal du Midi, an astonishing engineering work, the first major summit canal, completed in 1681 by the visionary Pierre-Paul Riquet, connecting the Mediterranean to the River Garonne and hence to the Atlantic. We marvelled at the Malpas Tunnel which carries the waterway under the Ensérune Ridge before it descends to the River Orb via the eight lock Fonserannes staircase. The Canal was vital to the trade of southern France, and the Tunnel, situated only a few miles from the sea, might very well have been susceptible to an amphibious operation.
The Canal du Midi ends at Sete on the Mediterranean coast, but a further waterway, the Canal du Rhone a Sete. allows waterborne trade to avoid the unpleasantness of the Gulf of Lions, and take an inland route to the Rhone and Marseilles.
The western part of the Rhone/Sete Canal runs just inland, behind the windswept beaches of the Gulf of Lions, and is likewise vulnerable to interference from the sea. I admit that I may have advanced the Canal’s opening slightly, but I found it impossible not to include the fabulously evocative Maguelone Cathedral and its environs in my story.
Though large resorts with enormous marinas have been built along its coast, the Gulf of Lions is an inhospitable place, as a visit to the museum at Cap d’Agde, with its exhibits of artifacts from wrecks dating from pre-Roman times will attest. The shore is low and featureless, and, in the east, the Mistral blows fiercely down the Rhone valley, while in the west the Tramontane sweeps along the barrier of the Pyrenees and into the Gulf. Snowden and Oleander felt the full force of these winds, and the Tramontane did for HMS Pegasus. Kadash, AKA Kim, our current boat, a 40 foot aluminium lift keel sloop, was usually well snugged down in some port when they blew, and suffered no more than inconvenience as she pulled against her mooring ropes and heeled violently under the pressure of the wind.
It is the privilege of the novelist to turn his flights of fancy into the dubious reality of a story, and when we walked along the coast near the port of Palamos in Catalonia, that’s what I did. A steep path led from a rocky beach to the cliff top, and I thought “I could just imagine a beweaponed Snowden climbing up there” – and he did climb that path in Gulf of Lions, on a secret mission, accompanied by the ship’s bosun.
Kim’s trip through the Strait of Gibraltar inspired my description of Oleander’s passage. Like Oleander, Kim’s passage was made in strong winds and reduced visibility, close to the Moroccan shore to make best use of tidal streams, although the wind was behind Kim, and we had the advantage of Raymarine telling us exactly where we were.
Rabat is the capital of Morocco, (see previous blog) and a former Corsair republic. The entrance to the port is commanded by the astonishing Kasbah of the Udayas, the Atlantic swell piles up on the shallow bar, and the place made such an impression on me when we visited in 2024 that I could not resist using it in the book. Kim, with her lifting keel and reliable engine was able to cross the shallow bar and enter the port, unlike the deep drafted Oleander, which hove to offshore.
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