I'm working on a
new book set around Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. At present (in my very first
draft) it has this paragraph:
On Thursday 28 June, Burke and William walked as usual to the granite column and saw, but a few miles offshore, the sails of a naval squadron. Burke focused the telescope and saw, to his relief, not the tricolore of France but ...
I was about to
write 'the White Ensign' when I thought to check. And yes, the modern White
Ensign was only introduced as the standard flag for British warships in 1864.
Thank you Wikipedia. Also courtesy of Wikipedia we have:
"Ships flew the colour of ensign corresponding to the squadron to which they were attached, which was in turn determined by the seniority of the admiral under whose command the ship sailed (a rear admiral of the red was senior to a rear admiral of the white)."
At the time of
the Battle of the Nile, Nelson (who commanded the British force) was Rear
Admiral of the Blue, so my sentence now ended with 'the Blue Ensign'. At this
point a friend (well, he was a friend then) pointed out that the Blue squadron
was generally assigned to patrol the Pacific. (Hence, he said, the fact that
the Australian and New Zealand flags are based on the Blue Ensign.) Was I sure
that it was the Blue squadron at the Battle of the Nile? And, to worry me
further, he produced a painting showing one of the ships involved flying the
White Ensign.
I shouldn't have
let that painting bother me. Paintings are not photographs and battle pictures
were very seldom done by artists who were actually at the scene. Sometimes I
have seen quite famous paintings of incidents that I have researched thoroughly,
and the paintings are simply wrong. In this case, I have had a look at a couple
of paintings that were done not that long after the events. 'The Destruction of
'L'Orient' at the Battle of the Nile' is quite a famous painting done early in
the 19th century and it shows a Red Ensign. Thomas Luny's much reproduced
painting shows a White Ensign.
Still, there was
clearly room for doubt, especially as none of the contemporary paintings I
found had a Blue Ensign. So I started through the accounts of the battle. Most
serious histories point out that Nelson was an Admiral of the Blue, but they
say nothing about his ensign. I even found a contemporary account by someone
who was there and who had logged every incident his ship was involved in, but,
of course, he would have assumed that anybody reading his work would know what
the colours were, so he doesn't mention them.
Finally, after a
fruitless couple of hours, I decided to stick with the Blue Ensign. But I might
call in on the National Maritime Museum to make sure.
And what
difference does all this research make to the finished novel? One word. One
word in a paragraph which may not even survive to the final draft.
And that, my
friends, is why historical novels take so long to write and are worth every
penny of their pathetically inadequate cover price.
