There’s a bit of mystery about how these tiles ended up in a curiosity shop in Tring, U.K.
 After all, they date from about 1330!


They portray a series of scenes from — supposedly — the life of Jesus, but they aren’t just the same old New Testament tales. They are a medieval take on biblical stories and are particularly interesting because they portray the everyday life of the 14th century England rather than the Palestine over a thousand years earlier. They can be seen in the British Museum in London.

The above tile supposedly shows Jesus playing by the river making pools. When a bully destroys one, he falls dead, only to be resurrected by the young Jesus, apparently achieving this miracle by giving him a kick, after being admonished by his mother. (Or touching him lightly with his foot. Take your pick.) The first English comic strip?

 When in the U.K. on the recent trip, visiting castles and manor houses formed part of my research. Today I used a tiny part of that research in the book I’m writing — Book 3 of The Forsaken Lands.


I just wrote this:
Flattening herself against the solid oak of the linenfold panels, Sorrel stared at the King.

I’d never come across “linenfold” panels until I visited The Vyne Estate, a National Trust property in Hampshire, and I was fascinated. 


 

Along this gallery, once walked Queen Katherine of Aragon and King Henry VIII. Still later he came back, this time with Anne Boleyn on his arm…

 I got shivers just walking down this long gallery, thinking of the feet that had trodden those floors, the eyes that had feasted on those panels, the men and woman who had lived and walked here.

Not to mention the long-forgotten artisans who created these lovely wooden panels.

 And so it was that Karen Miller and I ended up spending a day here, looking at things like this:

The modern Endeavour…

The mess deck of the Endeavour

18 miles of rope, 28 sails, 127′ mast

Cook had a high opinion of Lieutenant Richard Pickersgill’s surveying skills, often sending him off exploring and mapping coastal areas. Cook also admired his skills at handling native peoples, and even used him as an ambassador, because of his skill at dealing with dignitaries at European colonies on route! Not bad for a Yorkshireman who was only 22 when they returned to Britain in 1771.

The firehearth, the height of modernity in 1768 …

Family legend had previously told me that Richard was renowned for his drinking and
his life had ended when he fell between a ship and the wharf back home
in Britain. Family legend also said that it was his tales of Botany Bay
that led to my great grandfather migrating to Australia in the 1840s.

When I was in Sydney earlier on this year, these stories alone gave me the incentive to visit Endeavour
replica, now moored in Sydney Harbour. This ship, commenced in 1988,
and finished in 1994 in Fremantle, Western Australia, recreated part of
the original Endeavour‘s journey in the 1990s.

The Mess Hall, home to 60 men

I did have another reason to want to look around a replica of the
eighteenth century sailing ship; it would be invaluable research for my
upcoming trilogy, part of which is about the European trade to the
spice islands, set in a period vaguely resembling the 1750s.

Officer’s cabin

For this reason, I dragged my pal and fellow writer, Karen
Miller off to the Maritime Museum. Actually, I didn’t have to drag her at all, because––guess
what––Karen also had an ancestor who sailed aboard the original Endeavour. In fact, he was a senior officer, and outranked poor Richard who didn’t get a cabin, but had to mess with the seven midshipmen — until he replaced the Master who died on the way home.

Karen’s ancestor was Second Lieutenant Hicks, who died of TB in Batavia. His moment of fame? He was the first person to sight the Australian coast!

And here’s me looking at a replica of a chart of Queensland, surveying and drawing done by Richard.

The Great Cabin, with Joseph Banks’ desk.

Another of Richard Pickersgill’s charts

And so, there you have it. Two Australian fantasy writers go to see the Endeavour and thereby discover that they’d both had members of their families aboard. Mine made it back to Britain; Karen’s, alas, did not. For a moment, we could imagine what it would have been like to be part of the crew of the Endeavour; and we could marvel at the fact that Richard Pickersgill and Zachary Hicks knew one another 240 years before Karen and I ever met…