“Rough Passage to London”

Robin Lloyd’s “Rough Passage to London” October 10 at Camden Public Library

 

Author Robin Lloyd will give a talk on his fascinating new historical novel, Rough Passage to London: A Sea Captain’s Tale, based on the career of his real-life ancestor Captain Elisha Ely Morgan. Lloyd’s talk, on Thursday, October 10, 7:00 pm, is part of the library’s Discover History Month. Remarkably, the book is Lloyd’s first novel, and is attracting great praise and attention. Library Journal gave it a starred review and a “highly recommended” report.

 

“Robin Lloyd is a great reporter, and he has shaped meticulous research into a rollicking story of the sea and the tall ships that sailed the North Atlantic in the 1800s. Amazingly, he hadn’t planned to write a novel when he began reading about his ancestor, Elisha Ely Morgan—who knew everyone of his day, from Charles Dickens to Queen Victoria. We can be glad that the more [Lloyd] read, the more he realized he had the makings of a fine story.”--Bob Schieffer, chief Washington correspondent, CBS News

 

Robin Lloyd’s early years were spent on the island of St. Croix where his parents owned a dairy farm and milk plant. As a boy, he grew up sailing in the Caribbean. Lloyd was a foreign correspondent for NBC News for many years where he reported mostly from Latin America and Africa. He also covered the White House during the Reagan and Bush administrations. Lloyd has created and produced news programs with foreign networks as well as documentaries and segments for domestic stations, including Maryland Public Television. Among his prestigious awards are four Emmys from the National Capital Chesapeake Bay region and an Overseas Press Award. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

 

History comes to life in this suspenseful debut novel of nineteenth-century seafaring, imagined by a direct descendant of a legendary American skipper. Lloyd’s research fills in the days of the packet ship era based on the career of his real-life ancestor Captain Elisha Ely Morgan, who plied the New York-Liverpool-London route. Books will be available at the talk, provided by Sherman’s Books of Camden. History Month is supported in part thanks to the Camden National Bank.

 

April 7, 1814. Dawn. Coastal Connecticut. Brothers Elisha Ely Morgan and Abraham Morgan, respectively eight and thirteen years old, witness a British redcoat raiding party torch defenseless American ships toward the end of the War of 1812. The boys are spotted and chased in their rowboat, with execution the likely outcome. Suddenly the sun crests over the horizon, temporarily blinding their pursuers and giving them the instant they need to escape.

 

Flash-forward to eight years later—Ely boards a sailing ship in the port of Lyme. He is sixteen and intent on two things: to answer the ancient, mysterious call of the ocean by becoming a seaman, and to find out what happened to his brother, Abraham—who vanished on a South America-bound ship six years earlier. Thus begins the incredible journey narrated in Rough Passage to London, to be published in October. Former NBC News Foreign Correspondent Lloyd is more than just knowledgeable about 19th Century maritime history—he is a direct descendant of the real Captain Ely Morgan, who made over one hundred voyages across the Atlantic, gaining fame and renown on both sides of the ocean. Morgan entertained everyone from the painter J.M.W. Turner to William Thackeray to Queen Victoria on board his ship. He was admired from high society to sailors’ taverns, and his close friends included Charles Dickens, whose story “A Message From The Sea” drew inspiration from Morgan’s character and experiences.

 

Rough Passage to London combines Lloyd’s meticulous research and reporting abilities with rich imagination and his close personal connection to the family drama at the core of the story. His search to find out more about his seafaring ancestor began with an oil portrait of Captain Elisha Ely Morgan he inherited from his grandmother. All he knew about this ancestor was that he was a ship captain who was a close friend of Charles Dickens. After two years of research, he had found intriguing anecdotes and scraps of historical information about Morgan, but no journals. He combed family records and found a typewritten copy of an actual letter Ely Morgan’s mother received from a sailor in 1816 when Ely was just ten years old. The letter notified her of a double tragedy--her two eldest sons, William and Abraham, were apparently lost at sea. The details about Abraham’s fate were puzzling and cryptic. The novel evolved from there. The result is a pitch-perfect historical fiction layered over a heart-pounding mystery that will prove irresistible to lovers of sailing, American history, British culture and great suspense.

 

As Ely watches the land recede out of sight on his first transatlantic voyage, he realizes he is not just leaving a place he knows behind, he is leaving his childhood behind. At first, he is inexperienced and at the mercy of rough seas as well as cruel shipmates. But with an unshakable determination to master the sailor’s trade and uncover the truth about what happened to Abraham, he grows into a resilient, skilled deckhand and is promoted through the ranks to second mate, first mate, and eventually captain of a packet ship.  

 

Ely’s coming of age parallels America’s coming of age when American square-rigged ships ruled the commercial highways of the Atlantic, carrying freight, passengers and the mail. Rich and poor traveled on the same ships along with almost all the communications between America and Europe. They were called packet ships, and for several decades they were the most reliable shuttles across the Atlantic as well as the envy of the maritime world.

As the young officer gains stature in the shipping industry he confronts the harsh realities of the treatment of sailors on the lawless wharves of London and New York, as well as the horrors of human slavery that were a grim reality on the Atlantic.

 

Meanwhile, between voyages, he picks up the trail of an opium dealer named William Blackwood in the seedy alleyways of London. Evidence points to Blackwood having had a hand in Abraham’s disappearance, but the elusive trafficker and his dark ship Charon somehow always manage to disappear just before Ely finds them.

 

Undeterred, Ely pursues this only link to the truth across the ocean and back even as it becomes apparent that there are powerful people with a vested interest in him never succeeding. He must handle these mysterious threats alongside his responsibilities as skipper of the ship Philadelphia, as well as his attraction to eighteen year-old Eliza Robinson. At the same time, he becomes all too aware on board ship of some of his English passengers’ unfriendly views toward Americans.

 

When a mysterious castaway with a suspicious tattoo and information on Abraham’s whereabouts turns up aboard Ely’s ship, Ely is thrust into the underbelly of the shipping trade, where he uncovers secrets that could scandalize the London elite. And when a series of non-coincidental near-death experiences indicate that Blackwood has gone from hunted to hunter, Ely must draw on his deepest reserves of courage and resolve if he is to be the last man standing.

 

Robin Lloyd exhibits a gift for creating an authentic sense of place that is rarely seen in first-time novelists. And his ear for nineteenth-century dialogue—whether the whisky-breath slang barked in seamy public houses, or the wry bons mots of a fictionalized Charles Dickens himself—is never short of impeccable.

 

But first and foremost, Lloyd has simply crafted a great story—one that no one else could have told. The novel provides a vivid portrait of the hard-knocks life of packet ship sailors gripped by the many hardships at sea and personal tragedies ashore. The book brings to life a period of maritime history at the dawn of the oceangoing steamship era when American square-riggers were the bridges across the Atlantic. Rough Passage to London will thrill suspense fans and transport history buffs to a vibrant, vivid moment in our shared past.

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