Cast of Characters

When I started out on Jake White’s saga I had intended that this would be a young man who shagged his way through life in a series of episodes, hence ‘Jake White -The Beginning’. The first chapter seemed to end up presaging a debauched life style, and then there came a hiatus of about nine years, Whatever, basically I couldn’t think what to do with him, he seemed interesting but ... and then, having written a lot more I discovered that the less sex I put into the stories, enjoyable as it is, it’s a bit repetitive, the more readers enjoyed them as reflected in the higher scores I obtained. This could mean that I am not very good at writing about sex, or that my writing improved...

When I realised what I should do with him I started on what seemed a familiar route, but I couldn’t think why it was familiar. After someone suggested that I should acknowledge a debt to Argon (and then of course C S Forrester and Alexander Kent and ... I finally realised that the saga owes a debt to the BBC TV series ‘The Onedin Line’, but to be honest not a very big one. The authors mentioned write stories about naval warfare, mine are about trying to earn a living through trade, and occasionally getting mixed up in what is really espionage. James Bond the salesman if you will.

The 19thC is an interesting time period when many changes were taking place. Between 1830 and 1870 transport went from the speed of a horse to seventy or eighty miles per hour on land although at sea the increase was smaller but as more efficient engines came along, and steam ships didn’t have to stop for coal so often and were free of wind direction, then journey times decreased dramatically and Bombay and New York became almost on the doorstep. In 1869 the Suez canal cut journey times from six months to around three weeks. If you compare this to the late 20^th early 21stC the time taken to cross the Atlantic has barely changed in 70 years.

When I returned to the story I realised that I could take it a lot further and that the sex scenes in chapter one were, as many actresses (or at least directors) will tell you, essential to the further development of the story.

The other thing that has been said is that I have enough characters to rival ‘War and Peace’. Well, maybe, but that is how life goes on, you meet people, and then you move on and sometimes see them again, sometimes not, and you meet other people. However, I have recently been asked for a ‘cast list’. I decided that since the story is published at intervals this could be helpful, obviously if you are reading a normal novel everything is still fresh in your mind and you aren’t usually dealing with so many characters. I thought a bit of background and bit bit of history where necessary would be a good idea.

So, here we go:

Chapter one:

James Underwood - Jake’s uncle, his mother’s brother.

Lydia Underwood - James’ wife.

Caroline - their elder daughter.

Victoria - younger daughter.

Miss Perrett – governess to the girls

Millie - maid

Evie”

Tilda - Lydia’s maid.

There are also two assistants in the shop but they are of no consequence

At this point the long gap took place. I think that I had the idea that Jake would find some naughty goings on at work but I wasn’t sure if I could write it. Many of my ideas arrive almost fully formed when I’m soaking in my bath – it’s deep enough for the water to come up to my neck, and the wood fired boiler gives lots of hot water. The ideas are then chased around, often in the middle of the night, and then left to ‘marinade’ in the grey matter.

And so suddenly we got:

Chapter two:

Lady Bridget Harmsworth

Brigitte – Lady Bridget’s companion/maid

Captain William Pook – Master of the ‘Aurora’

George Johnson – Mate of the ‘Aurora’

Chapter three:

Lord and Lady Clevedon – Lady Bridget’s parents

Col. Cadogan – Army officer who we may meet again.

Harcourt Fenton-Mudd – secretary to Lord Clevedon

Where the idea for making dresses came from I’m damned if I know, although I have done this in the past and I am very interested in fashion, particularly historical. In fact I admit to a perversion in that I generally prefer to imagine women dressed, I mean, get their kit off and they all look alike don’t they? Alright, they don’t. The only problem with this idea is that in the 19C fashions changed almost as quickly as they do today, and many of the dresses had so much decoration they could only (apart from the basics) be made by hand. But there, why let a few facts stand in the way of a good story? I could be a politician!

Chapter four:

Florentina – Jakes mum

Prenderghast – book keeper

Mr Horace Wills – local businessman

Annabelle Wills – his wife

There are various other characters who are of no future significance.

Whether Horace Wills made cigarettes (WD and HO Wills – Imperial Tobacco) I’ve no idea, his business isn’t mentioned, but I wanted what I thought of as a typical Victorian patriarch and the name popped up before I realised what it might be interpreted as.

Chapter five:

Dennis Green – General assistant, becomes Jake’s personal assistant.

Major Humble – customs officer

Kaitlynn Humble – Major Humble’s wife.

Roisin Humble )

Siobhan Humble) their twin daughters

Angelica Gray – becomes assistant to Caroline

Sarah – dockside woman, we see more of her.

Chapter six:

Captain Oates

Chapter seven:

Mr Hatherley

Col Carver

Tom Sprackling )

Jerry ) hands signed on the schooner

Captain James – HMS Swallow.

Lieutenant Fitzherbert – First Lieutenant HMS Swallow

Colonel Carver just makes the weight here, I doubt we’ll see him again, Captain James will reappear as will Fitzherbert.

Now, we start to get some Welsh names so: Aber means the mouth of a river, but that can be where it meets another river as well as the sea. A settlement at that point always takes its name from the minor river. Aberystwyth (the first ‘y’ is pronounced as a ‘u’) is a seaside town and the major river is the Rheidol, but the river Ystwyth joins the Rheidol just before it gets to the sea. So it names the town. Aberaeron (aeron a godess) is pronounce Aber – Aye – ron and Aber Gwaun (gwaun is meadow) is Aber Gwine, and Cleddau is Cle – th – aye. As near as I can make out this translates as ‘swords’ – ‘cledd’ is sword and ‘au’ is plural – and looking at a map the river does look like a collection of swords.

Then we have a reference to Bristol’s Floating Harbour. A glance at a map will show that Bristol is well inland up the Avon river (afon – the f is a v - is Welsh for river!) Originally the ships in the harbour would dry out on every tide, which has a 40 foot range, and so needed to be stoutly built – hence ship shape and Bristol fashion (a phrase I recently heard used by a NY tug skipper) – but the Avon, which flowed through the harbour, was redirected in a new cut and a large lock built at the entrance to the harbour so that ships could stay afloat. The harbour originally went right though the city centre although much was filled after the harbour became less used with the advent of bigger ships which then used Avonmouth.

Chapter eight:

Mrs Smith and Mrs Jones – Annabelle Will’s sisters

Harriet Wills – daughter

George Wills – ‘Georgina’ or ‘Gina’ – son.

Mrs Johnson – George’s wife

Ursula Dickinson– maid

Herbert Graves

Bessie Graves - wife

Edmund Graves )

Stephen Graves ) sons

William and Henry Wills – sons of Horace and Annabelle

Ursula the maid has been named here since I might use her later.

Photography was in it’s infancy at this time and was mainly in the hands of amateurs.

Chapter nine:

Anna Smith

Lady Bedlington

Lady Fox

Commander Cedric Fitzherbert RN – HMS Swallow – addressed as captain because he commands Swallow. Promoted from 1^st lieutenant.

Admiral Sir Everet Fox RN

Maria O’Brien

Lieutenant Grime – Flags. Basically the Admiral’s ADC.

You will appreciate that we are dealing with ‘the Irish problem’ here, it seems to have started in the mists of time and will end ... in the far distant future.

Chapter ten:

Becky – shop girl

Louisa Smith – Annabelle’s sister, we met her in chapter eight.

Maudie – skivvy

Major Hector Humbert

Jim Adlem – labour master

Sean Murphy – Irish docker

It’s doubtful if any of these will have any future mention, but you never know

It seems that as soon as a new medium arrives almost the first thing that happens is that some girl gets her kit off. In the best possible taste of course! Photography is the case in point here, but the film and video industries got to it as soon as they were invented and of course historically every medium from paint through sculpture has been used. Why the ladies should be so disposed I’m sure I don’t know, but I’ll keep on enjoying it.

Chapter eleven:

Jack – Millies son

Jacob jnr)

Caroline ) Caroline’s twins

Evan Evans

Gwen Evans

Lionel Jenkins

Jenny Jenkins his wife

Mrs Davies proprietor of the Castle Hotel in Aberaeron.

Tomos Davies – shipwright.

Ioan Evans )

Iona Evans ) Son and daughter of Evan and Gwen

More Welsh: Ioan is pronounced Yone, and Iona is Yona

Chapter twelve:

The Duchess of Skegness (Edith)

Lady Hermione Russington – AKA Anna Smith.

Betsy – Millie’s assistant nurse maid.

Myfanwy

Myfanwy – the ‘f’ is pronounced as a ‘v’ as in English ‘of’

Chapter thirteen:

Madame Rose de Pamplemouse – I have been taken to task about this!

Mary Kelly

Chapter fourteen:

Walter Bagehot – A real character who was an economist with Stuckeys (a real bank now part of RBS) he became the original editor of The Economist newspaper.

Henry Falkner)

George Batten) Bank directors, I doubt we’ll see them again

Lord Kingswood AKA Mr Hatherley

Smith and Jones, sailors on Bellatrix – I forgot I’d used these names, but they are very common

McTavish – Engineer of Bellatrix

Amelia Norton

Nathaniel)

Nerissa ) son and daughter of Mrs Norton

Mr Measley – her solicitor

Chapter fifteen:

Chapter sixteen:

Jimmy Green – sailor on ‘Rigel’ – it’s the name of the sail set under the bowsprit of a clipper.

Captain Kirk – Master of the ‘Rigel’

Colonel Sanders

Rhett Butler

Zeke )

Jonathon)

Mary )

Josephine) slaves

I have not tried to represent the southern accent or the speech patterns that slaves may have had.

I have received one or two comments, a correction: USS is a US Navy designation, so I changed that to SS, and my attention was drawn to HMS Enterprise of 1848. This ship pre-dates the story slightly, but was built in the yard of, Money Wigram & Son at Blackwall on the Thames, as was the original ‘Aurora’, of the story. Although built as a merchantmen the scantlings of these ships were those of warships, hence Blackwall frigates. The cost of Enterprise was £24,545 which makes my guess at the cost of Jake’s rather smaller ship at £16K pretty good. To put costs in some perspective the clipper ‘Flying Cloud’ built on the US east coast in 1850, sailed to San Francisco, and after clearing the cost of building and the costs involved in the voyage made a profit of $80,000. There were, admittedly, propitious circumstances, but they can go either way.

Chapter seventeen:

Captain Ellis Cockburn – y’all know it’s pronounced Coburn

Regina Mainwaring

Eugenie)

Cedric ) Mainwaring children

Chapter eighteen:

Mrs Saltford – probably won’t see her again

Mrs O’Toole

Trooper Gregson

Trooper Forsett

O’Shaughnessy – Priest in the village but I don’t think I mentioned him earlier and we will not see him again.

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