| In Search of Kydd’s Caribbean I hadn’t been to the Caribbean before, but I planned to set my third book, SEAFLOWER, there – and so it was that Kathy and I set out one cold January morning in 2001 in search of Thomas Kydd’s Caribbean – a time when sugar was king and Yellow Jack a dreaded peril… First stop was Jamaica. My task, as always on these trips, was to transport myself back in time to the eighteenth century, to the world Kydd would have known – exotic foods like ackee and bammy, legends of Henry Morgan’s notorious Port Royal, uprisings of the Maroons (escaped African slaves) – and, of course, the activities of the Royal Navy. The four days we allowed for Jamaican research went all too quickly and then it was off to Antigua and the lovingly restored English Harbour. In this Georgian dockyard I could see Kydd facing many challenges, from fever to the ire of the master shipwright. Guadeloupe followed, and a feel for the French presence. Then Barbados, which is actually a coral island, set apart from the rest of the eastern Caribbean chain. In Kydd’s day Barbados was more English than England! All too soon our time was up, but on the bare bones of my plot I had been able to flesh out the details of this special episode in a young seaman’s life. In fact, I had an embarrassment of riches – certainly enough to tuck some away for another visit to the Caribbean in a future book…
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