An affair of honor, p.36
An Affair of Honor, page 36
Onward and upward!
Bob Macomber
Serenity Bungalow
Matlacha Island
Florida
Author’s Postscript
The swirling international political climate portrayed in this novel is accurate. Bismarck, Moltke, Verdi, Garibaldi, Gladstone, Disraeli, Sultan Hassan, Grant, Commander Jackie Fisher, and Admirals Drummond, Geaugeard, and Case were all real. As Wake’s career progresses so will theirs, and he will run into some of them again.
The ships of the U.S. and Royal navies in the book were real, as was RMS Trinidad. Weapons described were real, from the Whitehead and Howell torpedoes to the Gras rifles. The race for torpedo technology was very serious during this period.
Descriptions of the locales in the West Indies, Europe, and Morocco were taken from my personal experiences. The description of the memorable sunset transit through the Straits of Gibraltar is from my voyage.
The Mt. Pelée volcano at St. Pierre on Martinique finally did explode on 8 May 1902, killing 29,000 people—everyone in the city except one prisoner in the jail.
The African cobra test of manhood is only too real—I went through it at Djemma el-Fna in Marrakech. Never do this.
The celestial events depicted in the novel were real. Jupiter emerged from behind the moon in late April 1874, easily seen from Morocco and appearing as if it had emerged from inside the moon. The comet described at the end of the novel was real and spectacular. Comet Coggia (Comet C/1874 H1) stunned the astronomic community in 1874. Islamic astronomers were some of the world’s very best prior to Europe’s surge in telescopic technology.
I did my best to present the foreign languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Latin, and Arabic) accurately in both flavor and fact. Any errors in translation are unintentional and mine.
The mercenary in the novel, Colonel Michael Woodgerd, does not reflect the attitude or actions of the real LTC Mike Woodgerd (USMA), who won the title contest and so became a character. The literary Woodgerd would cringe at some of the adventures of the real Woodgerd.
Sevilla, Porto Fino, and Morocco are fascinating places that my soul aches to experience again. I will. And I urge my readers to visit them also.
I hope readers of this novel will gain an understanding that the three great faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are inter-related, and that fanatics are not representative of any of these religions. It is my fervent hope that one day we will all start celebrating our similarities and stop dwelling on our differences.
Peace…
Bob Macomber
Key West
Florida
About the Author
Robert N. Macomber is an internationally recognized maritime expert who has won awards for his literary work and been named to the U.S. Army’s Distinguished Military Author Series. He is a lecturer for the American History Forum and an annual guest author aboard the Queen Mary 2. He lives at the quaint fishing village of Matlacha Island on Florida’s lower Gulf Coast and roams the oceans each year, researching, lecturing and writing. His website is www.robertmacomber.com.
Robert N. Macomber’s Honor Series:
At the Edge of Honor. This nationally acclaimed naval Civil War novel, the first in the Honor series of naval fiction, takes the reader into the steamy world of Key West and the Caribbean in 1863 and introduces Peter Wake, the reluctant New England volunteer officer who finds himself battling the enemy on the coasts of Florida, sinister intrigue in Spanish Havana and the British Bahamas, and social taboos in Key West when he falls in love with the daughter of a Confederate zealot.
Point of Honor. Winner of the Florida Historical Society’s 2003 Patrick Smith Award for Best Florida Fiction. In this second book in the Honor series, it is 1864 and Lt. Peter Wake, United States Navy, assisted by his indomitable Irish bosun, Sean Rork, commands the naval schooner St. James. He searches for army deserters in the Dry Tortugas, finds an old nemesis during a standoff with the French Navy on the coast of Mexico, starts a drunken tavern riot in Key West, and confronts incompetent Federal army officers during an invasion of upper Florida.
Honorable Mention. This third book in the Honor series of naval fiction covers the tumultuous end of the Civil War in Florida and the Caribbean. Lt. Peter Wake is now in command of the steamer USS Hunt, and quickly plunges into action, chasing a strange vessel during a tropical storm off Cuba, confronting death to liberate an escaping slave ship, and coming face to face with the enemy’s most powerful ocean warship in Havana’s harbor. Finally, when he tracks down a colony of former Confederates in Puerto Rico, Wake becomes involved in a deadly twist of irony.
A Dishonorable Few. Fourth in the Honor series. It is 1869 and the United States is painfully recovering from the Civil War. Lt. Peter Wake heads to turbulent Central America to deal with a former American naval officer turned renegade mercenary. As the action unfolds in Colombia and Panama, Wake realizes that his most dangerous adversary may be a man on his own ship, forcing Wake to make a decision that will lead to his court-martial in Washington when the mission has finally ended.
An Affair of Honor. Fifth in the Honor series. It’s December 1873 and Lt. Peter Wake is the executive officer of the USS Omaha on patrol in the West Indies, eager to return home. Fate, however, has other plans. He runs afoul of the Royal Navy in Antigua and then is sent off to Europe, where he finds himself embroiled in a Spanish civil war. But his real test comes when he and Sean Rork are sent on a mission in northern Africa.
A Different Kind of Honor. In this sixth novel in the Honor series, it’s 1879 and Lt. Cmdr. Peter Wake, U.S.N., is on assignment as the American naval observer to the War of the Pacific along the west coast of South America. During this mission Wake will witness history’s first battle between ocean-going ironclads, ride the world’s first deep-diving submarine, face his first machine guns in combat, and run for his life in the Catacombs of the Dead in Lima.
The Honored Dead. Seventh in the series. On what at first appears to be a simple mission for the U.S. president in French Indochina in 1883, naval intelligence officer Lt. Cmdr. Peter Wake encounters opium warlords, Chinese-Malay pirates, and French gangsters.
The Darkest Shade of Honor. Eighth in the series. It’s 1886 and Wake, now of the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence, meets rising politico Theodore Roosevelt in New York City. Wake is assigned to uncover Cuban revolutionary activities between Florida and Cuba. He meets José Martí, finds himself engulfed in the most catastrophic event in Key West history, and must make a decision involving the very darkest shade of honor.
Honor Bound. Ninth in the series. In 1888 Wake, U.S. Navy intelligence agent, meets a woman from his past who begs him to find her missing son. Wake sets off across Florida, through the Bahamian islands, and deep into the dank jungles of Haiti. Overcoming storms, mutiny, and shipwreck, Wake discovers the hidden lair of an anarchist group planning to wreak havoc around the world—unless he stops it.
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Robert N. Macomber, An Affair of Honor
