Dewey Lambdin - The King

Further, no naval captain would willingly cede the WINDWARD advantage to a foe. Staying up to windward and making the other fellow come to you was known as keeping the wind gauge. Choundas could not operate against the principal sea-lanes to and from Canton from LEEWARD. He had to be up to WINDWARD, from which he could strike and then dance away if he ran into some ship stronger than he was. I hope I have related the limitations and advantages of wind position in The King's Privateer.

The harbor I invented at Spratly Island was a right bastard-easy to get into with a southeast trade wind, almost impossible to exit-and I hope I showed how near Lewrie was to losing Culverin in his attempt to get to sea and chase those pirates. Harbors were always carefully selected so the entrance was not blocked with a headwind, a "dead muzzier," most of the time. A ship trying to work its way out, short-tacking across a narrow entrance channel, would end up stuck on a lee shore and pounded to bits by the waves and rocks. That's why most harbors in the Caribbean are on the lee side of the islands-not just for protection from gales.

I could get into a lot more detail shown on the sketch of a full-rigged ship-what the braces, lifts, jears, and halyards did and all that-but that would take an entire book in itself. Let me recommend, instead, "the" guide: John Harland's Seamanship in the Age of Sail, U.S. Naval Institute Press, lavishly illustrated by Mark Myers, Royal Society of Marine Artists, Fellow of the American Society of Marine Artists. The U.S. Naval Institute also has Bryan Lavery's The Arming and Fitting of English Ships of War, 1600-1815 and Peter Goodwin's The Construction and Fitting of the English Man of War, 1650-1850. Interesting, too, is The Fighting Ship of the Royal Navy: 1897-1984 by E. H. H. Archibald. Time-Life's Seafarers series is out of print, I believe, but most libraries should have Fighting Sail, which covers the American Revolution and the high points of the Napoleonic Wars-the Great Age of Sail.

Speaking of the Napoleonic Wars… there's Alan Lewrie, bound for the Bahamas after a few months' rest ashore. I expect that he shall have a rather peaceful time of it during his three-year commission. That should put him back in England, should he outrun any more irate husbands or furious daddies, in 1789. Just in time for…

… but as they used to say at summer camp when they shooed us off to our cabins so the counselors could cavort with the girls across the lake, "That's a story for another night's campfire."