Where does your affinity with the sea come from?

So your career goals were set very early?
I won a scholarship to Harvey Grammar School but my mind was captivated by seeing low grey shapes far out to sea, outward bound to who knows where. In the hope of having all this nonsense knocked out of me, my father sent me at the tender age of fourteen to Indefatigable - a sea-training school with a tough reputation.

And did it have the desired effect?
It only strengthened my resolve - I joined the Royal Navy at fifteen! My family emigrated and I transferred to the Royal Australian Navy after seven months service. I served eight years in the Navy and was eventually rated petty officer. My naval career included service around the world: the Far East, Antarctic waters and South Sea islands. In Vietnam I saw action in a carrier task force and was on board Melbourne at the time of the disastrous peace-time collision with Voyager.

And how did it feel to leave all that behind?
Leaving the Navy was a wrench but I wanted to take up the all education I had missed. I graduated in Far Eastern studies (intrigued by what I had seen on my voyages) and psychology. After teaching for two years I practised as an educational psychologist. Then I met Kathy and we decided to seek adventure in Hong Kong. I did some post-graduate work but became disillusioned with academic life, so got involved in computers and software development. At this stage I renewed contact with the Navy, being commissioned into the Royal Navy Reserve. I was honoured to be awarded an MBE at this point, and recently retired as Lieutenant Commander.

So where did the writing come in?
In 1990 I returned to the UK to be involved with a NATO project concerned with the strategic deployment of merchant shipping. It was an extremely high-pressure environment and in 1996 Kathy and I took stock - she told me to get a life! She saw my potential as a writer (where I did not) and persuaded me to take a half-time job to begin absorbing the craft. Completion of KYDD was a landmark in my life.

Where do you work?
My working environment is a small room kitted out with nautical books on all sides, sea charts in a corner and my computer on my desk. Before starting work I reverently take a long sniff at a mounted length of rope recovered from the wreck of the Invincible, which sank in the Channel in 1758. It still reeks of tar and two hundred years of sea. When I switch on my computer in the morning it plays stirring sounds of the seas - seagulls, the creaking of a ship under sail, and if I'm a little bleary, a broadside of cannon fire!

Was there a special message you wanted to share with readers in writing KYDD?
In a way, yes. Our image of the jolly sailor is really just a caricature that has resulted from the distorting lens of Victorian sentimentalism. In the long peace of the nineteenth century, the image of the sailor underwent a gradual change until he became an object of patronised quaintness. This is not the real eighteenth-century seaman.

They overcame fearful conditions to become the masters of the sea in the greatest age of sail. This could not have come about if the ships were floating concentration camps, or they were cowed slaves. The core were proud, self-sufficient and resourceful men who had a definite culture. They despised the landman and the sweepings that the press brought in. The mighty ship-of-the-line was as complex in its day as a moon rocket today, the most complicated machine on earth, and this could not possibly have been operated by the dregs of humanity, as some writers would have it. The eighteenth-century seaman was not articulate as a breed and has never had anyone to speak for him. KYDD is my tribute to them.

Do you feel that these men have been neglected by other writers?
Probably my favourite form of fiction over the years has been the sea tale, but I have always felt that the story has never been told to its fullest. I have tried to address this this by using the common seaman as a vehicle, rather than the almost universal quarterdeck focus of other writers. By presenting events from the perspective of the men themselves I can explore the sensory richness of the sea in all its danger and exhilaration, because things are experienced first-hand by those at the coal-face - not witnessed by men standing at a remove, giving orders. It is the book that I myself always wanted to read.

Did you have to undertake a great deal of research?
Yes - but I enjoyed every minute of it! Or almost every minute - most of the names in the book come from local eighteenth century graveyards, and I have been reported to the local constabulary on several occasions for loitering! There was no need to research actually getting into a hammock though - for most of my time at sea I slept in a Navy hammock, and I have fond recollections of their comfort in a blow at sea.

Thank you for your time, Julian, and I look forward to following the seafaring adventures of Thomas Paine Kydd for a long time to come.