David's HNF Blog
My HNF blog includes author interviews, subsequent edition releases, any other nautical literature news, etc.
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- By: David Hayes
A new specialist publisher has been launched for naval fiction, "Flagship Editions is a digital-first, independent publisher reviving forgotten classics and championing bold new voices".
So far The King's Frenchman by Richard Nigel Stembridge, Royal Yankee by Victor Suthren and Any Means to an End by Andrew R. Welsh have been re-released and books from Walter Jon Williams will also be available.
If you wish to be updated as new works come out you can sign up to their free newsletter and currently, to mark the launch, you can pick a free book from the three named above. The link to sign up is mailchi.mp/flagshipeditions.com/free-edition
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- By: David Hayes
I have just added a new author and series to the site, The Nicholas Cruwys Naval Series by Adrian Westbrooke.
Independently published, there are currently six books in the series. All released in 2025, the most recent, Northern Edge, on 8 December.
The books are available in Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle and Audiobook formats.
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- By: David Hayes
For those of you looking for a book for young adults, Linda Collison's Star-Crossed is available again having been re-released for Kindle download.
1760: Portsmouth, England
The world is at war when orphaned Patricia stows away on a West Indian-bound merchantman contracted to carry gunpowder for the British forts, This rash act will change her life beyond anything she could imagine as Patricia becomes Patrick to survive during the Seven Years War.
First published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2006, Star-Crossed was a 2007 New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age
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- By: David Hayes
I have just become aware of a series that is written in French, Les Aventures de Gilles Belmonte by Fabien Clauw. There are currently 7 books in the series in Kindle, Paperback and Audiobook formats and an 8th will be released soon. So if you speak French this may be of interest.
Using Google Translate the series description is:-
A great maritime adventure novel where love meets death, and the reader rubs shoulders with intrepid sailors and big-hearted brigands.
March 1798. Robespierre had lost his head and Napoleon was still in Bonaparte's swaddling clothes. In these tormented times, intrigues and betrayals are the daily life of men of power seeking as much to save their heads as to make a fortune.
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- By: David Hayes
Bowlines –Tying together fact and fiction in maritime literature
Bowlines will be a unique occasion for those whose interests lie in maritime history and maritime literature to come together and share inputs from both these worlds.
The event will take place over two days, June 6th and 7th, within the setting of Exeter’s delightful Heritage Harbour.
Based in the city’s grade 1 listed seventeenth century Custom House and other historic buildings, delegates will be able to gain insights into current maritime writing from some of the country’s leading experts.
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- By: David Hayes
Commander Roger Johnson. USN has just released all 3 books of a new pirate fiction trilogy, Of Chains and Slavery. They are John Flint's Bastard, Slavery and Revenge and Treasure and Redemption. It is set in the world created by Robert Louis Stevenson in Treasure Island and they are available for Kindle and in paperback worldwide.
From the cover of the first book - "Welcome to the world of Joshua Smoot—the bastard son of Treasure Island's John Flint. From the first page of John Flint's Bastard to the last, you will experience the full spectrum of love versus hate, loyalty versus betrayal, freedom versus slavery, and the extremes of mankind's goodness and evil toward one another.
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- By: David Hayes
There's good news for fans of C.S. Forester's famous naval hero, Horatio Hornblower. C. Northcote Parkinson's companion book The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower is to be reprinted. A paperback version will be available in the US on 2 April 2024 and UK on 2 June 2024. It is now available for pre-order.
At the same time his anthology, Portsmouth Point: The Navy in Fiction, 1793-1815, will also be reprinted
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- By: David Hayes
I've just added a new author to the site, George Edwardson. Of particular interest may be his two book 'The Sea Officer' series. This follows the extraordinary true career of Irish sailor Amos Freeman Westropp who spent over 30 years in the Royal Navy during the turbulent years of the Napoleonic Wars.
He served in a dozen ships and fought in some of the great sea battles of the time against the French, Dutch and Spanish fleets during the course of which he met, amongst others, Admiral Lord Nelson, Admiral Villeneuve, the Duke of Wellington and the Emperor Napoleon.
Amos Freeman Westropp is presumably an ancestor of the author who writes under a pseudonym but is George Westropp, an amateur historian and genealogist.
Also available is his four book 'The Wharton Series' the most recent book of which, Goliath, was released in September 2023.
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- By: David Hayes
Author Mark M. McMillin has been updated with a new Privateer series, Captain Bloody Mary, the Queen's Privateer. Set in Elizabethan times with a female 'hero', it consists of three books, The Butcher's Daughter: A Journey Between Worlds, Blood for Blood: The Uncertain Journey and Ill Winds Blowing Across a Troubled Sea: The Journey's End
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- By: David Hayes
Over the years I have been running this site, if there is one question I have been asked more than any other, it's "Are there any english language books written from the French point of view". There may be some where "our hero" is captured and spends a few chapters on a French ship and one book a few year ago came close to being the start of a series, but effectively the answer has been no. However things have changed and historian J. D. Davies has taken up the challenge with a new series 'The Philippe Kermorvant Thrillers'. I wanted to know more and reached out to David who has been kind enough to share an article with us.
‘ARE WE THE BAD GUYS?’: OR, THREE NAUTICAL FICTION WRITERS WALK INTO A BAR
In the best traditions of historical novels, certain facts have been modified for reasons of dramatic licence. In this particular case, there were more than three of us. But we were definitely in a bar – in a hotel in Cumbernauld, of all places – and during the course of our conversation, one of our number mentioned how regrettable it was that to all intents and purposes there were virtually no novels in English set in the ‘classic age’ of naval historical fiction, namely the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. (Which is more dramatic licence; delete ‘virtually’.)
