Under the Black Ensign - Chapter 4 - Racial Dynamics of the 17th Century

Any dramatic tension last chapter might have generated by promising to maroon our hero is immediately nullified by the very title of this chapter, "Bristol Finds a Ship."  Not that any of us should have been overly-concerned that the protagonist would bite it in Chapter Four, but still.

There's environmental symbolism with a "dying sun" in the background as the Terror sails to the passage separating the Nevis and St. Kitts islands from the Virgin Islands, and I guess some other symbolism as Bristol puts on a black "sea cape" (it's a cape, but you wear it on the sea) for what could be his final voyage.  Ricardo's corpse is dumped overboard so casually that you might wonder why it's worth marooning a skilled navigator over his murder.  The still-nameless quartermaster chats with Bristol a bit, and mentions that they may as well stick to the course he already plotted.  Bristol urges him to tell Bryce the truth when they meet him, again making me wonder whether they could at least keep Bristol prisoner for a day and let the boss decide what his punishment should be for defending himself from a mutineer.

But whatever, let's maroon the hero for a chapter.  A longboat is launched, and Bristol is actually the one giving the oarsmen the order to row him out to an island.  The boat hits the sand, Bristol steps off with "the rifle, the bottle of water and the bag of shot" ...wait, why a rifle and not a pistol?  A bit trickier to mercy kill yourself with a longarm than a handgun.  Anyway, he doesn't even look back as the boat departs, 'cause he's a tough guy like that.

Bristol spends the remainder of the daylight walking a circuit of his new home and reflecting on his situation.

He knew what would happen to him.  Although ships passed this point regularly, he would never dare signal them.  They would understand only too well that he was a marooned pirate.  And if a ship did take him off, he would be promptly hanged from a yardarm.

When his water gave out, that would be the end.

Hey, don't give up, maybe you could fashion a desalinization plant out of coconuts or something.  But yeah, Bristol's screwed.  His only hope would be if another pirate ship came by and picked him up, except ever since the British cracked down on Port Royal and other outlaw havens, most pirates these days have moved on to the Pacific.  And of course there's the fact that Bristol has broken two of the pirate's most important precepts, and "the law of the pirate was inflexible."  Because when you think of a bunch of rogue sailors stealing property and murdering anyone who resists, you know they're a law-abiding people.

As the sun sets behind Nevis, Bristol's thoughts turn to poor "Jim," who surely is in for a life of suckage even if Sir Charles buys whatever story she spins about her absence these past few months.  But no sooner does he think this than Bristol hears another boat land on his island.  He readies his gun and demands that the newcomer stay back, but it turns out to be none other than Lady Jane!  Yes, instead of rowing to Nevis, she decided to shadow the Terror and come to rescue Bristol under cover of darkness.

And she says "I hope you're not angry."  I don't know why.  It just seems to be something a lot of female characters in these type of stories say when they come to the rescue of a male hero.  Maybe they're feeling bad for threatening their masculinity or implying that the guy can't rescue himself.  Anyway, no, Bristol isn't mad, but he's not exactly overjoyed either - they now have Lady Jane's "jolly boat" and can go anywhere in the Caribbean, but Nevis is not an option, both because of who runs it and the fact that their ship can't sail into the wind.  Port Royal is similarly closed, and none of the Dutch holdings in the area would be welcoming either.  So they decide to...

Well, they decide nothing, instead Bristol spreads out some canvas from Lady Jane's boat to serve as a blanket to sleep on, and chivalrously takes watch.  He argues against a fire, since it would just alert any ships of the law that they're marooned pirates - between the jolly boat and lack of wreckage, they couldn't pass themselves off as shipwreck survivors.  So he spends the night "lost in thought" as Lady Jane sleeps, though we're not told what Bristol was thinking about.  He doesn't have a plan or anything ready the next morning, he just eats the smoked beef she cooks up.  Maybe he spent all night regretting never getting a parrot after turning pirate.

So our hero and his probable love interest (even if no hanky-panky has transpired yet) are stuck.  They have a boat, yes, but no good options on where to go in it.  So it's up to the author to bail them out of this mess.

No sooner does Bristol finish his breakfast than he spots a sail, kicks out the fire, and takes Lady Jane to the sparse shelter of the island's trees.  Bracing himself with his "sea boots" ...you know, I thought that, since this wasn't a sci-fi story, we'd avoid stuff like this.  No "space boots" or "blast rods" or anything like that.  But no, we get "sea cape"s and "sea boots" instead.

Anyway, the ship is a scruffy Dutch bark that Bristol surmises to be a slave ship, or a "blackbirder."  It's pursued by a British man-o'-war out to protect Great Britain's monopoly on human trafficking in the Caribbean, which leads to two pages describing how the man-o'-war closes to wreck the Dutchman's masts and rigging with a broadside, leading the spiteful slave trader to beach his ship on a nearby shoal.  The slave-trading crew escapes to their longships and rows off to the west, and the man-o'-war loiters for another half hour before deciding its not worth trying to salvage the bark and leaving.

Well.  Wasn't that convenient?

So Bristol and Lady Jane take the jolly boat over to the misery ship, figuring that if nothing else they could scavenge supplies from it.  They board it and find it even less reputable than the British navy vessel Bristol used to work on.

Bristol wrinkled his nose.  "Whew!  Slavers aren't exactly perfume chests, are they?"

Lady Jane swallowed hard, a resolute look in her eyes.  "But what bout the slaves?  They're still 'tween decks."

Let it be recorded that Lady Jane was the first to think of the slave ship's human cargo, but also that neither she nor Bristol gave the slaves any thought until they were actually within smelling distance of them.

Bristol prepares himself for the "gagging sights" that await him, and also gives Lady Jane his pistols and sets up one of the deck guns to cover the hatch, in case things go wrong with his rescue attempt.  Then he goes belowdecks, encountering a "more than sickening" stench and "a low mutter, like that of animals surprised in a den."  And we're off to a great start, aren't we?

Three hundred slaves are crammed together in the darkness, manacled and chained to the deck, though only half of them still live.  Bristol asks if anyone speaks English, and - conveniently - someone does, and is able to pass on Bristol's warning that he's here to rescue them, but will shoot if anyone rushes at him.  This person also immediately calls Bristol "master."  Sigh.

So the slaves, probably Nubians by their height and build, are freed and stagger up to get some fresh air.  The "blacks" or "slaves" - the narration is never so kind as to call them 'men' - help themselves to some scummy water and hardtack from the ship's stores, and the fellow who speaks English approaches Bristol.  He introduces himself as... well, it's another page before he's actually asked what his name is, Lady Jane and Bristol are more curious about how he speaks their language.

Anyway, the man's name is Amara, he's got a stylish saber scar down the side of his face, and he led the rest of these men in service of the King of Sennar (modern day Sudan) before a dispute over pay led to them being sold to the Turks as galley slaves off Tunisia.  And then they were captured by the Spaniards, and then sold to the Dutch.  Eeesh.

Bristol thrust his thumbs into his scarlet sash.  He placed his feet wide apart and studied the Nubian's face.  "Look you, Amara.  If I release you to one of these islands, you will be taken and sold again, to labor and die under the blazing sun."

Amara bowed his head, eyes to the planking.  "You freed us, Captain sir, it... it is not fitting that you free us only to see us die."

Really, Hubbard?

Well, that's how it happens.  The slaves aren't so much freed as they come under new management.  Amara recognizes his place in the order of things and is ready to serve this great white protagonist.  I mean, it just wouldn't do for a bunch of slaves to be freed by some hero, thank him for his kind deeds, and just go off to do their own thing, would it?

Amara does point out that "Captain sir" doesn't... oh for fu... once again, people are willing to follow a Hubbard Protagonist before they even learn his name.  'cause Bristol never takes a moment to introduce himself, he just gives orders.  Though I guess it really isn't 'once again' since this is like his first published book...

Anyway, Amara points out that his "captain sir" doesn't actually possess a ship, since the Dutchman is slowly sinking.  But Bristol confidently states that he'll have himself a boat soon enough, and orders his new crew to strip the bark of anything useful and get the longboat fully manned.  "God knows, your men should certainly know how to row."

"Your men," corrected Amara, beginning to smile.

Arrrgh.

Amara bowed and turned to the men in the waist.  He began to bark orders.  Dull, listless eyes turned up to him.  Life began to flicker there, life and hope and the will to do....

Yeah, it's not being released from their chains and brought to the fresh air and given food and water that revitalizes these people.  It's the fact that a white guy is giving them orders.

But hey, should we really have expected otherwise?  We've seen Hubbard's casual racism in his last works, so there's no reason to expect that his first stuff is going to be any better.


Back to Chapter 3

Forward to Chapter 5

Under the Black Ensign - Chapter 3 - The Ups and Downs of a Life of Piracy

Chapter 3 and we already have a "the days went swiftly" montage as Bristol adjusts to his new life as a pirate.  And what a wonderful life it is!

There are so many recruits that there's more than enough sailors to not only repair the Terror's battle damage, but keep the ship running in top condition and its decks scrubbed "whiter and cleaner than they ever had been in service of the King."  There are none of the "cruel orgies"... um... that Bristol had heard about, instead the crew is for the most part peaceful and disciplined without any need for a cat-o'-nine-tails, and any disputes are settled by a quartermaster and jury of impartial sailors, or in worst cases regulated duels on land.  They even can expect compensation from a company fund for any injuries sustained or limbs lost in the line of duty, something those so-called navies of the supposedly civilized empires never even considered.

Yes, "buccaneering was the sailor's dream of Valhalla."  Because when you think of peaceful sailors with progressive health insurance policies, the immediate comparison is to the old Norse afterlife of eternal bloodshed and rowdy feasting.

These men were not the scum of the ports or the sweepings of the sea.  They were average seamen who had tired of the filth and abuse suffered in the merchant fleets and the navies.  They wanted nothing more than a comfortable life, money to spend, brandy to drink, and a prospect of sometime being able to become planters or merchantmen in their own right.

They owed their fearsome reputation, for the most part, to cowardly captains who had defended their own valor by besmirching the behavior of the buccaneer, giving that as a reason for struck colors.

Phew!  For a moment I thought I would be expecting to root for some sort of gritty anti-hero, but it turns out the pirates were the good guys all along!  They're even cleaner than the Royal Navy, and if that doesn't prove they're alright, nothing does.  These guys aren't bowing to any upper-class sea captain or toiling away for employers who don't respect them, they're go-getters willing to buck convention to improve themselves, motivated entrepreneurs taking control of their lives and striking back against an oppressive political and economic system.

The fact that pirates by definition attack other people and steal their stuff seems strangely under-emphasized, though.

Whatever, Bristol feels like "a gentleman once again," and got the Lord High Governor's quarters and a pick of the loot, so he's wearing a wide-brimmed hat and pair of silver-mounted pistol that probably used to belong to a Spaniard.  While he's not the Terror's new captain, as navigator he's still pretty important, and I guess Ricardo didn't want what were probably the nicest quarters on the ship.

Jim the midshipman is hanging out with Bristol in his room, and our hero ponders why a young officer-to-be from the British Navy ended up with a crew of pirates, before deciding that the "lad was handsome enough, had a low, pleasant voice, and was certainly well educated."  He's got such big blue eyes, "frank and steady," and hair so yellow that it "made the eyes seem all the bluer," and just seems to naturally get along with Bristol... um...

Anyway, Bristol and Jim are talking about tomorrow's rendezvous with Captain Bryce off Martinico, and the latter mentions that Bryce is the only one able to control the "pistol-proof" Ricardo.  Jim also warns Bristol that Ricardo has been spreading rumors among the rest of the crew that Bristol is a "dainty little thing," because Ricardo resents "the fact that you wash your ears."  Bristol reminds the midshipman that bad-mouthing a guy in the cabin next door may be a bad idea, Jim is like 'what's he gonna do, open the door and lumber in?' and immediately the door opens and Ricardo lumbers in.  

When Bristol asks Ricardo "What's under your hatch?"  Um... anyway, the captain explains that he and the rest of the crew have been talking, see, and they're tired of doing Bryce's bidding when they're sure that one day he'll run off with all the loot.  So he wants Bristol to be their navigator as they start an independent operation.

But Bristol is loyal to the guy who a chapter ago saved his life, and refuses to cooperate.  So Ricardo draws a pistol, and we get an action scene.  But not an official Hubbard Action Scene, he's using paragraphs instead of a barrage of exclamations.

Before Bristol could gather himself, Jim's small boot lashed out and cracked against Ricardo's knuckles.  Ricardo bellowed with rage.  His open hand swooped down.  The palm cracked loudly against Jim's cheek.  Crumpling up, Jim slid into the far corner of the cabin.  The jaunty cap fell off and the yellow hair streamed down on either side of the handsome face.  The mark of the blow was as red as blood on the white cheek.

It's also not a Hubbard Action Sequence because it isn't the bad guy who's getting his ass handed to him.  Or her ass, in this case.

Faces were peering in through the door, but Bristol gave them no heed.  Both he and Ricardo were staring at Jim.  Something about the way the hair fluffed out, something about the way the jacket lay against the throat-

"My God," cried Bristol, "she's a girl!"

Or an elf.  But since this isn't a fantasy novel, yeah, you're probably right.

While Bristol is distracted by the relief that he doesn't harbor latent homosexual tendencies after all, Ricardo is still on the ball, and swings his pistol around for a shot at Bristol.  Our hero draws his rapier and lunges, Ricardo parries with his bare hand but bleeds for it, only for Bristol to bury his blade in the rogue captain's chest.  Ricardo foams a bit of blood before expiring on the floor.

Unfortunately, this all happened with the cabin door open and the rest of the crew watching, so the quartermaster steps forward, asks Bristol to surrender his weapons, and places him under arrest for killing Ricardo and "harboring a woman in disguise aboard this ship."  Wimmen are bad luck at sea, of course, though I never understood this nautical convention - you'd think that a group of men spending months away from shore might be eager for some female companionship.  Or maybe sailors are wise enough to anticipate the sort of conflict that might arise from a pack of fellas romantically pursuing a small number of ladies in a confined space, and decided that the best recourse would be to do without women entirely.  And maybe engage in some situational homosexuality.

Anyway, the other sailors leave - guess Bristol's under house arrest - and when "Jim" wakes up, Bristol explains that she's going to be dropped off shortly while Bristol will be either executed or marooned.  And being a delicate female, "Jim" immediately starts crying that she's being abandoned after months of service and they're about to "kill the only man I ever respected."

It's at this point that Bristol asks who exactly "Jim" is, and it turns out she's really Lady Jane Campbell, former lady-in-waiting to the Queen of England and Sir Charles' wife-to-be!  Very economical, Hubbard - there was exactly one female previously mentioned in the story, so that's who Jim is.  Yes, when Lady Jane was being carried from England to Nevis, Captain Bryce attacked, and Jane decided to dress herself up in a midshipman's uniform to protect herself, since she knew her "fate at the hands of the crew wouldn't be so good."

Now wait a minute, Hubbard.  I thought these pirates were jolly, disciplined sailors who respected and looked out for each other.  But you just showed that a bunch of them were traitorous mutineers, and implied that they would have mistreated a woman prisoner.  My simple, pulp-loving mind is confused.

Anyway, Jane was quite happy to be Jim and Bryce was willing to train her (it's unclear whether he knew she was female or not).  See, she would have only been marrying Sir Charles because her king commanded her, she'd met the man before and was not at all impressed "with his manly conduct."  But now it's all gone wrong - the still-nameless quartermaster returns and informs them that they're just off Nevis, and a boat and allotment of gold are waiting for Jane.  The other sailors nod politely as she passes, since they don't actually dislike her, just the fact that she's a woman aboard their boat.  And off she rows, calling goodbye to Bristol, who salutes as they part ways.

As for Bristol, he's due to be marooned somewhere in the Anegada Passage, as the Terror continues to regroup with Captain Bryce.  And that's where we end the chapter.

Wait a minute, if the rest of the crew doesn't mistreat Jane as she's dropped off, was she ever in any danger to begin with?  And they're still going to meet up with Captain Bryce even though Ricardo talked them around into abandoning their former captain?  So the mutiny is over?  Then why is Ricardo getting killed - after drawing first - a bad thing?  At best you could say that they're ignoring the fact that they saw Bristol's surprised reaction to Jane's gender so they can get rid of them, but they don't really have a motive for that, so-

Ah, screw it.  We can't tell a pirate story without someone getting marooned.  Now pretend to be worried how our hero is going to get out of this predicament even though there's still fifty pages left in the story.


Back to Chapter 2

Forward to Chapter 4

Under the Black Ensign - Chapter 2 - Welcome Aboard

Remember that ship Bristol spotted early last chapter, but didn't say anything about?  Well, in that moment between the cat-o'-nine-tails hissing back in preparation to strike and it actually connecting with Bristol's back, someone else spots that boat, yells "Sail ho!", and everyone instantly forgets about the flogging.  A lucky break, that.

Men leaped to the rail.  The haze of light cast up by the sun on water momentarily blinded them.  And then they saw the ship.  It was sailing against the morning sun, full-rigged, tall-masted, gilded sterncastle sparkling.  It was a bark of about sixty guns.  Against the light, its sails looked black.

Even as they stared at it, a roll of bunting went up the truck and burst.  Its identity was unmistakable.  A grinning skull against an ebon field.

Okay, wait.  The Terror is bringing the Lord High Governor back, presumably from England, to the island of Nevis, so they're going west or southwest.  The pirate ship isn't sailing into the sun, but "against" it, so that its rear is visible.  This would mean that it's traveling parallel to the Terror... and Bristol last chapter saw it to the south of them... wait, if it's against the sun to the east, how could it be alongside the westward-headed Terror? 

The Lieutenant Ewell tries to earn that promotion to Captain Obvious by crying "A pirate!"  For his part, Captain Mannville emulates his puffed-up superiors by getting offended that some scurvy seadog would dare show his colors to a British warship, and orders the attack.  The narration mentions the ocean spray leaping, "glistening like pearls," as the Terror changes course, though it doesn't spell out that the ship is basically doing a U-turn..  And in all the bustle, Bristol looks down at the abandoned cat-o'-nine-tails, laying on the deck "like a den of snakes," and kicks it further away.

We get about two pages of straight narration describing the warship's pursuit and preparation for combat, and I have to say, even if the term is historically accurate, you probably shouldn't use "powder monkeys" to refer to crewmen bringing gunpowder to the ship's weapons, it just detracts from the tension.  During it all, Hubbard through Bristol decides to become a historical commentator, musing that only a decade ago the Terror would probably have "dipped its own colors and continued smoothly upon its way" instead of engaging the pirate, since at the time such privateers had been preying on the rival Spanish Empire.  But now this poor scalawag has been driven out of Port Royal by a "suddenly righteous" government, and all the great powers of the sea have united against their former pirate proxies.  It's really society's fault that pirates turned out the way they did, see, and since the nations of the world are such hypocrites it'll be okay when Bristol goes pirate himself.

So the Terror closes with the pirate ship, which is moving away from them, but not fleeing all that quickly.  So was it headed east or northeast the whole - screw it.  About the time the narration (but not any crew members) wonders if the pirate is up to something, the buccaneer turns into the wind and suddenly slows.  The Terror doesn't react in time to use its sea brakes and shoots forward, and thus "presented an oblique to the pirate broadside."  The British man-o'-war is pounded by twenty cannons, taking heavy damage to the mast, sails and rigging, but by the time it can fire its own guns in response, it's "slipped sideways to the bark" and the cannons hit nothing but ocean.

I wish I had some graphical skill to try to work this out with imagery, but as best as I can figure: the Terror was following behind the pirate ship, which suddenly slowed, forcing the Terror to break off at a slight angle to avoid rear-ending the other boat.  The pirate ship was ready for this and took a shot as the Terror passed, and by the time the Terror was able to return fire, the target wasn't alongside them anymore.

How did the British Empire come to rule the seas, again?  Are the Spanish and French absolutely hopeless sailors?

We're told that it will take half an hour to reload the cannons thus fired, which I have trouble believing, but obviously Hubbard knows something I don't.  So the Terror's captain has no choice but to try to get in a broadside with its unfired port guns, but before he gets the chance, the pirates close and board in "an avalanche of furious color."  The 'battle' lasts for all of two paragraphs and consists of the British sailors either dying or throwing down their weapons and begging for quarter.

I'm now wondering how the British managed to cross the seas.

Through the wraiths of powder smoke came a gigantic figure, like the devil himself was striding through the fumes of brimstone.  On his head was a plumed hat and about his shoulders there swirled a red cloak.  A naked rapier, dripping scarlet, was held in his bejeweled hand.

But no parrot?

Captain Nicehat has his men crowd the prisoners together and demands which of them is in charge.  Captain Mannville steps forward to give his surrender, but the pirate captain has some men search the ship's quarters until they drag out the Lord High Governor, who drops to his knees and begs for mercy.  The pirate captain is dubious that the king would pay any sort of ransom for the quivering pansy and turns his back.  And Bristol, who has been tied to the mast the whole time, laughs.  This makes the pirates suddenly notice him, because I guess you wouldn't expect a ship to go into battle with a guy tied to the mainmast, and so you have trouble believing it even if you see it.

A young midshipman, smooth of face, probably--or so thought Bristol--about fifteen, came close to him.  The midshipman's sword quickly severed the ropes that bound him.  Bristol rubbed his arms.

Pirate chick.  I haven't read ahead, but I'm calling it.  After all, we need a woman around to keep any main character on a ship full of men from coming down with a case of the Gay.

The pirate captain asks what the H, the midshipman responds in a "singularly gentle" voice (pirate chick) that Bristol obviously was about to be flogged, and indirectly introduces the pirates' leader as Captain Bryce.  Bristol explains that he was about to be punished for trying to kill Sir Charles with a marlinespike - and this is a good use of a technical truth, I approve of it.  He introduces himself as the former first mate of the Randolph, and wouldn't you know it, but Captain Bryce happens to have need for a skilled navigator, since he's trying to expand his franchise into a proper fleet.

Across Bristol's mind flashed the hardships he had suffered as a British sailor. Scurvy, bad food, gunshot, indifferent medical attention, no shore leave, no pay.

"Sign on?" said Bristol. "Why, of course I'll sign on!"

See, as a pirate, he'll still run the risk of scurvy, and be forced to put up with bad food, and has an increased chance of getting shot since he's throwing in his lot with a bunch of lawless murderers, who probably don't have a good health plan either.  But hey, he'll get a share of the booty, and a chance to spend it on more booty.

So the now-pirate Bristol will stay on the Terror, and is introduced to his new captain, the barrel-chested, long-armed, bearded, scarred Ricardo: "Well get along.  I'm what they call pistol-proof, in case we don't."  Oh, and the "slender midshipman" (pirate chick) named "Jim" will also be on board, as Bryce's agent and presumably Bristol's love interest.  And that's about it, all the other British sailors are put on the boats and set free.

"And you," cried Sir Charles, catching sight of Bristol, and feeling secure in his boat, "I'll see you swing from my Execution Dock the next time we meet!"

"I wish you luck!" cried Bristol.

Oh good, our hero gets to keep his Chapter One nemesis, presumably for a later, more satisfying, final showdown.

Back to Chapter 1

Forward to Chapter 3

Under the Black Ensign - Chapter 1 - We're on a Boat

What can we accomplish in six pages?  For that matter, what can we do in a few sentences?

The marlinespike was inoffensive enough.  In capable hands it might possibly have laid a man out.  But Tom Bristol had shown few signs of wanting to lay anyone out, and if he had, it was certain that he would not have used a short piece of wood to that purpose.  And yet the marlinespike was to be Tom Bristol's passport to piracy.

So let's see - the very second word is an obscure and archaic nautical term that the reader will have to look up in a footnote or glossary, not a great start.  We've got a good action hero name for our main character, Tom Bristol, up there with Jack London, Alvin York, or Melvin Gloucestershire.  We establish that he's not normally a violent sort, but that he's not careless when he decides to use violence, and ultimately will become a pirate.  Not too shabby.

He was working in the crosstress of the mizzentop, hanging on with his toes far above a restless deck, using the spike to splice a length of line which had parted in the storm just past.

Aaaand that's how you negate any points earned from a decent opening, with another trip to the glossary.  Did Hubbard expect his audience to know this terminology off the top of their head, or was he trying to show off?

The next few brief paragraphs set the scene: the calm blue waters of the Caribbean with the mountains of St. Kitts visible to the west.  Bristol is aboard the HMS Terror, a heavily-armed man-o'-war ferrying the Lord High Governor of Nevis to his island so he can marry a Lady Jane Campbell, as Governors and Ladies do.  As for himself, Bristol has "a certain hunted look flickering in his eyes - the look of a caged leopard angrily pacing behind bars."  Also, he saw sails to the south, but Bristol's not on lookout, so he doesn't see any reason to call out.  Besides, with so much traffic on the Caribbean these days, why the alarm?  It's not like he's in a pirate story or anything.

While Bristol is justifying this dereliction of duty and silently mocking the Governor's paunch, that marlinespike, being a short wooden cone used to tie together or untangle rope, slips from where Bristol had stuck it between two lines and plummets down before he can catch it, right towards the Governor.  It hits the deck next to the guy, the Governor screams shrilly, Lieutenant Ewell (Evil?) yells for Bristol to get down this instant, and our hero knows he's screwed.

"You blackguard!  You insolent whelp!" shouted the governor.  "Trying to murder me?  'Od's wounds, what have you to say for yourself?"

"My marline-" Bristol began, his voice quite steady.

"Shut up!" cried the governor.  "It's attempted murder, that's what it is!  Attempted murder!  You're in the pay of France to kill me.  I see how it is now.  I see how it is."

We're now on page three of the story, and the author is already taking care to make the authority figures as unlikable as possible, so we won't feel too bad when our hero goes rogue.  We've got a skittish, overreacting governor, the arrogant Captain Mannvile (Vile mann?), and a bunch of others whose faces are "fat and red with soft living" with merciless eyes.  This ship's officers aren't particularly cruel compared to others,

But this was 1680, and the tide of lust for empire had swung high in the great nations of the world.  Human life was nothing.  Compassion was almost forgotten.  Britain was setting herself to rule the seas, and Spain was setting the example for bestiality.

Um... well.  Technically correct as a way to describe bestial behavior, but you still may want to choose another word, o master of literature.

The governor, whose name is Sir Charles Stukely (stu... stupidly?  stupid pukely?), decides that a good flogging is the way to instill discipline, and the captain agrees that Bristol shall receive a hundred lashes.  Even our hero has to grab the rail to steady himself after receiving this death sentence, but the governor is enthusiastic - "Perhaps that will teach the fool to respect the persons of his betters.  That murderously thrown belaying pin might have snuffed out my life!"

Now, as we all know, a marlinespike is hardly the same as a belaying pin, and contempt for his supposed superiors gives Bristol the strength to look the governor in the eye, correct him on his mistake, and add "had I known that it would fall, I am certain that I would have pitched it more accurately."  The governor goes purple and inflates with flabby rage at being called "sirrah," and so Captain Mannville adds another hundred lashes to Bristol's sentence.  He's doubly dead now.

With nothing left to lose, Bristol chews all these idiots out, daring them to shoot their pistols and ranting at being press-ganging even when he was already serving aboard the Randolph out of Maryland.  Ah, so he's a proto-American hero, a working-class guy up against a corrupt and arrogant bourgeois that would kill him for no good reason.  So it's okay when he goes pirate later in the story, see?

With one last note that Bristol is so damn manly that Captain Mannville is having trouble looking him in the eye, all the bad guys grab and tie him up, readying Bristol for his fatal flogging.  The quartermaster produces the cat-o'-nine-tails, a collection of lashes enhanced with brass wire and lead pellets, "responsible for more deaths than scurvy or gunshot," right.  The captain steps back, the governor steps forward with eyes that are "brittle hard, like polished agate..."

The lash went back with a swift, singing sound.  Bristol clenched his teeth and shut his eyes, expecting the white-hot flash of pain.

And the chapter ends.  Huh.  Certainly a better cliffhanger than all those "I've got you now, Countess Krak!"

All things considered, not too bad.  This is a very efficient chapter, which establishes everything we need to know to start the story in a few pages and puts it all into motion.  Yes, all the cast members are flat as cardboard cutouts and the story thus far is nothing we haven't seen before, but we can't complain that the food is salty and greasy if we pulled into a McDonald's.  If I were living during the Great Depression and couldn't afford a proper novel, this would not be a totally disagreeable way to kill a couple of minutes before getting back to my miserable existence.


Back to the Intro 

Forward to Chapter 2

Under the Black Ensign - Lowered Expectations

Hubbard's attempts to write sci-fi were undermined by his ignorance of science.  His attempt to write historical fiction fell apart when he tried to rewrite history to suit his story.  His attempt at satire floundered because he was out of touch with reality.  And his attempts to write serious epic literature failed because as an author he never grew out of the pulps.

So let's set the bar lower.  Throw him a softball.  Grab his legs and lift him so he can do a pull-up.

Under the Black Ensign is actually the earliest work listed on Wikipedia's bibliography of Hubbard's works, and was first published in the August, 1935 issue of Five Novels Monthly.  It's set in 1680, so there's no science for him to screw up, and we already know that this isn't a serious historical work because it starts on the HMS Terror, described as a "five hundred tons, seventy cannon" vessel even though the first Terror was a four-gun bomb vessel launched in 1696.  Also, there's no foreword about finally telling the real story of those victimized, misunderstood Caribbean buccaneers, or claiming that this is supposed to be a witty work of satire.

So in other words, all Hubbard has to do for the next 84 pages is tell a simple, escapist tale about pirates.  Since as I said he never developed the ability to write a story that wasn't pulp fiction, surely the man is in his element, right?

Now I said there's no self-congratulating foreword like the ones in Buckskin Brigades or Battlefield Earth, but that doesn't mean there isn't a foreword.  My edition of Under the Black Ensign is prefaced by just over four pages praising the golden age of pulp fiction, written by one Kevin J. Anderson.  Who Anderson is to you probably depends on what fandoms you're into - if you read the Star Wars expanded universe, he's the guy most (in)famous for the Jedi Academy Trilogy, the books with the dangerously cheesy Sun Crusher superweapon-spaceship and the incompetent Admiral Daala.  If you're into Dune, he helped Brian Herbert write a prequel series to the classic novels, which Penny Arcade famously compared to necrophilia.  And I think he did a book inspired by War of the Worlds about the time the live-action move came out a couple years ago?  My point is, he feels like an appropriate guy to sing the praises of L. Ron Hubbard.

The actual foreword's not much to write home (or blog) about: Anderson defines what the pulps were, cheap literature "for people who liked to read," with thrills and adventure and villains and a focus on storytelling over fancy prose.  Thing is, Anderson lists H. P. Lovecraft first on his list of pulp authors, and if you're ever read Lovecraft's stuff you know the guy could be as prosy as Cthulhu is a squamous, cylopean horror from the Stygian, non-Euclidian depths of space and time.  Anderson also thinks that Hubbard "really began to shine" when he turned from gangster and cowboy stories to science fiction, while I've argued exactly the opposite.  But again, this feels appropriate for Anderson.

Anyway, Anderson wraps up by assuring us that Under the Black Ensign and Hubbard's other Golden Age stories will "return you to a time when fiction was good clean entertainment and the most fun a kid could have on a rainy afternoon or the best thing an adult could enjoy after a long day at work."  As opposed to Hubbard's final work of fiction, or even some of Anderson's Dune stuff, which I would not call "clean" or recommend for young or impressionable readers.  But we're supposed to "Pick up a volume, and remember what reading is supposed to be all about.  Remember curling up with a great story."  Which I notice doesn't actually assure us that what we're reading is necessarily a great story.

At any rate, tune in tomorrow for some classic entertainment, or something that will make us think of classic entertainment.  Hopefully not in the same way that certain chapters of Mission Earth make the reader go to his or her Happy Place until they're over.

Forward to Chapter 1

Ole Doc Methuselah - Healing a Doctor

Hubbard faced a lot of obstacles when it came to writing a good story.  He was trying to write science fiction without understanding science, and trying to write about people when all the evidence suggests that he only fully comprehended the most negative of emotions and motivations.  His plot twists were never really clever, and if he had an original idea, chances were it was something like monsters who explode around radioactive particles, or Teenie.

That said, his premises aren't entirely without merit, and I've already mused how an editor or more competent writer could salvage even things like Mission Earth.  So let's wheel Ole Doc Methuselah into the operating room and see how we could keep him out of the morgue.  Which is a metaphor that falls apart when the author names the hero-doctor's spaceship the Morgue.  Hrm.

Anyway, isn't it strange what little effect Ole Doc being Ole Doc has on these stories?  The key component of this character - or at least his name - is that he's centuries old, but that never really seems to matter.  When he's doctoring he's more reliant on super-advanced gizmos and magical healing salves to cure patients than his long medical career.  The exception would be "Plague" when he's able to identify a mysterious illness because one of his first cases as a doctor was to help a woman with measles, but that wouldn't have been necessary if his Universal Medical Society had kept better records.  I suppose one could argue that Ole Doc's age helps to sell the feats of marksmanship or other action hero stuff we see him perform, except 1) that begs the question of why he needs to be a doctor in the first place and 2) we've seen similar stunts from non-immortal Hubbard protagonists.  Frankly, we could swap Ole Doc out for a regular physician with access to the same medical technology with no real effect on how the stories unfold.

So that's the first thing to change: make Ole Doc's age actually significant beyond how it lets him remember that measles is a thing.  Now as I said, any young physician could play Ole Doc's part in these stories - that's the problem with having a way of storing information in books or computers, it lets people access hundreds of years' worth of knowledge without having to be hundreds of years old themselves.  So instead of having Ole Doc's age impact the plot, how about make it impact his character?

A competent author could use an unnaturally-old character to explore what they think the effect of hundreds of years of continued living would do to a person's mind.  Now, you could play this for a lot of drama, make Ole Doc a grim figure buckling under the weight of centuries, someone who has watched the same problems and tragedies unfold again and again, someone who has seen everyone he ever cared for crumble into dust, someone whose mind is straining to contain more experiences than a mortal man is meant to endure.  But that's not really the kind of light-hearted fiction Hubbard was originally going for.

So instead you could make Ole Doc a bit scatter-brained, someone who can lose track of what day it is, or what century it is.  For someone who has met so many people and been to so many worlds, proper names become unimportant for him: he never refers to other characters by anything but their title or occupation, and doesn't bother to remember a planet's name or what its capital is called.

"But he already does some of that," you might point out.  And that's true, Ole Doc can be forgetful and has trouble getting along with people who don't have a great ass.  But Hubbard has Ole Doc forget to do important things like take his life-extending medicine and fuel up his spaceship, which leads the reader to question how Ole Doc survived so long in the first place, and doesn't make the connection between Ole Doc's treatment of other people and his extreme age.  His Ole Doc doesn't come across as someone trying to handle several lifetimes' worth of experience, he comes across as an improbably-surviving asshole.

The key is to give Ole Doc some characterization that shows why he's continued to do medicine for hundreds of years.  So it wouldn't hurt to make him interested in his fellow humans beyond the Girl of the Week.  He may not be able to remember his patient's name while he's working on them, and probably won't remember them once he gets on his spaceship and leaves, but have Ole Doc engaged with them, getting along with them, interested in who they are and how they're doing.  Show that their lives matter to him.  That slavery in general bothers him, not just the enslavement of a would-be supermodel in particular.  That if a horde of babies are about to be born on a planet with one caretaker, Ole Doc isn't one to walk away from the problem to go fishing.  Show that he's a physician who will teach people to take better care of themselves, not a technician who swoops in with a pharmaceutical ray rod when things get dire and leaves until there's another great emergency.  Or he feels like going fishing.

However, making Ole Doc sympathetic and altruistic crashes headlong into the backstory for Hubbard's Ole Doc stories, the whole Universal Medical Society and its medical monopoly.  If you really want to keep this angle - that there's an elite organization that has decided it is the only group moral enough to properly use advanced medical knowledge, but won't use that knowledge on anything but the greatest medical catastrophes; a group that it is so powerful that it can boss around planetary rulers with impunity, but so dispassionate that it doesn't care if those rulers are murderous tyrants because it doesn't want to get involved in "political" matters - well, this is a premise that would work best in some dystopian fiction, not an allegedly positive pulp story.

Of course, removing this Universal Medical Society does present a problem in itself.  If Ole Doc's doodads and textbooks become available to the masses, what makes him special?  Besides the age thing.  And this is probably why Hubbard came up with the UMS in the first place - since he's not doing anything with Ole Doc's age, and doesn't know enough about medicine to write Ole Doc as a super-doctor, the best he can do to make his hero noteworthy is make everyone else in the galaxy a moron.  The sad fact of the matter is that a galaxy without the Universal Medical Society doesn't need those Soldiers of Light to protect it.

The solution to this problem is to do what Hubbard doesn't and make something out of Ole Doc's age.  So in a UMS-less galaxy, where every local physician has access to ray rods and medical encyclopedias, Ole Doc's advantage is that he doesn't have to spend hours scrolling through computer screens or paging through tomes to know what disease he's looking at.  He may not have a perfect memory, but when he sees someone turning colors and frothing at the mouth, he'll remember the common symptoms of Algolian Flu and brew up a fix in a jiffy.  He many not be able to remember names, but hundreds of years of interacting with patients have given him the people skills to set others at ease in even the worst crises and coordinate a response when everyone's first inclination is to panic.  He may not always be up to date on the newest ray rod model, but he knows how to treat an illness without one, allowing him to act during power outages or in primitive hospitals when his fellow doctors would be helpless.

This talk about Ole Doc's age brings up another issue with these stories, or rather a question: why is Ole Doc one of the few immortals in the universe?  I'm not asking the author to explain the formula or whatever, I'm asking why Ole Doc has kept this revolutionary discovery to himself, even before the formation of the Universal Medical Society and its restrictions on what lesser men are allowed to know about medicine.  Does he have some philosophical reason for keeping it secret, like he thinks society couldn't handle a deathless population?  Does the treatment come with a terrible price, one that he thinks is only justified if he uses his extended existence to save others' lives?  Does he even remember how he came up with the immortality elixir, or was it a happy accident?  Is he still working out the kinks in the formula, still monitoring himself for any potential side-effects until he feels like it's safe to share with everyone else?  Or has he come to hate his condition and is contemptuous of any fools who would wish to join his eternal existence?

A good course of action would be to have the life-extending treatment be part of becoming a Soldier of Light - you get to live potentially forever, but sworn to the service of your fellow man and a life of constant toil.  I suspect this is what Hubbard was going for, but again he never bothers to explain it, and the notion is at odds with all the times we see Ole Doc loafing around or refusing to get involved in some problem or acting on whimsy.  And since I'm against the idea of the Universal Medical Society to begin with, I'd say it's better to have Ole Doc's agelessness be something unique to him and unable to be replicated.  That way we don't have to explain why angry mobs aren't constantly trying to dissect him and figure out what parts they need to eat to gain his immortality power.  Heck, maybe it'd be best if nobody knows Ole Doc is ageless, and he's just some odd drifter who comes in on an old spaceship but turns out to know a ton about medicine.

Only that wouldn't allow Hubbard to shower a protagonist with fame and fortune and gilded luxuries, and by now you know how important that rot is to him.

Finally, there's the matter of Hippocrates.  We know that Ole Doc purchased him at an auction as a medical curiosity, and we know that the alien is probably the only thing keeping Old Doc alive.  We can guess, since Hubbard doesn't properly develop the notion, that Ole Doc likes Hippocrates because the alien is almost as long-lived as he is, so the gypsum lizard-thing serves as a reassuring constant in an always-changing universe.  And we know that Hippocrates is incredibly devoted to his "owner," but we never learn why.  It's only in "the Great Air Monopoly" that Ole Doc shows any real concern or affection for his "slave," so Hippocrates' willingness to put up with Ole Doc's assholery is just plain perplexing.  And then there's Hippocrates' purpose within the narrative: in the stories as written, he's a combination butler and comedic relief character, someone to fuss over Ole Doc and make sure he eats his life-extending miracle drugs, but also whine and recite regulations for hours because that's humorous or something... I didn't say Hippocrates is an effective comedic relief character.

If it were me, I'd drop the "slave" and "butler" angle entirely, and let Ole Doc know how to take care of himself.  Instead, Hippocrates could be a fellow doctor, someone from a similarly long-lived species who wants to see how Ole Doc treats his patients.  And I don't mean Hippocrates wants to learn how to fix a human's broken arm - we can let him keep his perfect recall and have him read all Ole Doc's medical texts for that.  Instead, Hippocrates could be trying to learn about how to deal with patients, how to make some of the hard choices a physician is expected to handle in a crisis.  You could contrast the alien's stuffy, by-the-book approach and lack of diplomacy with Ole Doc's centuries of experience and good ol' country boy heart and soul.  And to keep the exchange from being one-way, maybe Ole Doc could learn things from Hippocrates, like how to use the latest medical gadgets and what's going on in the galaxy.  Since Hippocrates is naturally long-lived, maybe Ole Doc hopes to learn how to handle his own extended lifespan.

So, there's some ideas.  All you'd have to do to fix the "Ole Doc Methuselah" stories is overhaul the two main characters and the tales' basic premise.  And then decide what to do in those stories, since a non-stupid galaxy wouldn't let an author get away with plots like "the bad guys were using ragweed to sell 'air'" or "everyone else forgot what measles was" or "they forgot to check for radiation when visiting a strange planet."  Or in other words, more or less completely start over from the idea of "he's a doctor and immortal and in space." 

Alternatively, you could decide that's too much effort and read a better book about an immortal protagonist.  For example, I think Robert A. Heinlein did some stuff with a fellow named Lazarus Long, who... wow, his mom and his twin opposite-sex clones?

Ole Doc Methuselah - The Apex of Hubbard's Craft

"Ole Mother Methuselah" came out in January of 1950, and was one of Hubbard's last short stories.  Over the rest of the year and the early part of 1951 he published yarns like "To the Stars," "The Final Enemy" and... "Dianomitry?"  But in the May, 1950, Astounding magazine featured a little essay Hubbard called "Dianetics, the Evolution of a Science."  For the next thirty years, he was occupied with unlocking the financial potential of his own tax-exempt religion, fleeing overseas, and doing battle with the international conspiracy of Nazis and psychologists that secretly controls the world's governments.  It was only after he returned to the United States to live the remaining years of his life in seclusion that Hubbard was able to return to fiction with Battlefield Earth and Mission Earth, before dying in 1986.

Between Buckskin Brigades (1937), Fear (1940), the "Ole Doc Methuselah" stories (1947-1950), Battlefield Earth (1982) and Mission Earth (1985), we've now sampled works from the beginning, middle and end of L. Ron Hubbard's literary career.  One of the questions I had after reading Hubbard's last and most infamous novels was just how far the author had fallen to produce such miserable texts.

The answer: not much.

If I took out the dates and asked you to arrange the Hubbard stories I've covered in my blog(s) in the order you thought they were written, my guess is that it'd be a challenge.  You might think that the two Earth titles were obviously early attempts at writing given how badly they need an editor (and an exorcist), and Fear was probably the last thing the guy wrote since it's the closest to competently-executed.  But Hubbard's ability to spin a story, develop characters, and describe action evidently changed very little over fifty years of writing, and not for the better.

His heroes are physically perfect, either unusually young for their ability or else old and experienced yet outwardly youthful.  They can regularly outfight or outsmart their opponents, unless the plot calls for them to be momentarily inconvenienced.  They're usually blond, because objectively speaking that is the best hair color.  And their opponents are either amoral, self-interested and greedy, or else murderous lunatics who think they're doing the world a favor by destroying it - never sympathetic people whose differing ideals happen to place them at odds with the protagonist.

Confrontations between the hero and villains will be described tersely, and in later Hubbard works, in a barrage of single sentences.  The feats of strength and agility displayed in those confrontations will strain the reader's suspension of disbelief.  Oh, and there might be women in the background, but if they're important this relevance is based on their relationship to a male character, and they exist mainly to be wooed or rescued.  If a female has any traits that suggest an ability to take care of herself or keep up with the hero, these are merely to make her a more suitable mate for the male lead, and won't give her any real agency of her own.

What I'm getting at is that Hubbard's not a particularly good author.  But whatever, right?  Not every book has to be Animal Farm.  Sometimes you just want some cheap literary entertainment during your airplane ride or power outage or while waiting for the AI to finish its turns in Civilization.

Here's the thing, though - Hubbard did think he was writing the next Animal Farm when he gave us Mission Earth.  But he wrote it the same way as his first stories, the ones that were published in the pulps, those cheap magazines that were successful because reading had just been invented in the 1930's and we couldn't get our quota of Stupid from TV yet.  Mission Earth was Hubbard's satirical romantic espionage action epic, Battlefield Earth is a grand space opera or something, Fear was his attempt at psychological horror, but they all share those aforementioned similarities.  Even when he was out of the pulps, Hubbard was still writing pulp fiction, and shortcomings you might excuse as being acceptable for low-brow mass-produced literary escapism become less so in these more ambitious genres. 

I'm almost tempted to flip through Dianetics to see how much of Hubbard's writing style carries over into his attempt at scripture.

So that's one of Hubbard's core problems, an inability to grow and rise to the heights he's reaching for.  The other is that he mainly wrote science fiction, and liked to think that he was helping move science forward by envisioning a future with pharmaceutical ray rods and whatnot.  Unfortunately, this was undermined somewhat by Hubbard understanding science about as well as my cat understands English.  When he mentions specific principles or facts in his stories he either gets them wrong, or in Ole Doc Methuselah's case, has to lower the intelligence of everyone else in the story so that his hero seems smart for knowing basic stuff like radiation's existence.  Ironically, this helps Hubbard stand out - he's not just an old pulp writer who churned out stories about aliens and spaceships, he's one with spectacular misconceptions about how the universe works.

The irony is that there is one genre of literature out there where Hubbard's failings wouldn't necessarily be handicaps.  Oh, he dabbled in horror with Fear, but the "spooky" stuff mostly fell flat, and Buckskin Brigades involved him twisting history as much as he usually twisted science.  But there's a type of story where overpowered heroes are only to be expected as the products of destiny, where villains can literally be the incarnations of ultimate evil, and where incredible powers beyond mortal comprehension can be wielded by a few sages.

I'm talking about fantasy, of course.  Hubbard's science fiction tends to be pretty magical in itself, so I wonder why he didn't decide to write about the old sage Methuselah who wandered through war-torn kingdoms, quietly using his mystic healing arts to save lives and his skill at arms to right wrongs.  It wouldn't be a drastically different story, of course, but maybe it would be more palatable than the universe of morons and tyrannical, elitist physicians we've gone through.

Tragically, ironically, or tragironically, fantasy so happened to be the genre that Hubbard looked down his nose at during the intro for Battlefield Earth, where he scoffed at a hero learning how to use a flaming sword just by picking it up right before telling a story where a hero learned how to operate advanced alien equipment by soaking pure knowledge through his skin.  So we can only wonder.  What if Hubbard tried to write the American equivalent of Lord of the Rings?  Would he have been successful enough to get rich that way instead of setting the stage for Tom Cruise going nuts on Oprah's couch?  Would he be remembered as a hack, a master of his genre, or would he be remembered at all?  If fantasy as a genre would mitigate Hubbard's shortcomings, would he have any strengths to help him rise above mediocrity?

Eh, if he kept his anti-psychologist conspiracy theory, he'd probably write something like the Sword of Truth series.  Though of course those are "stories with important human themes," not fantasy novels.

Enough conjecture, let's wrap these ramblings up.  The Ole Doc Methuselah stories, at least compared to the other Hubbard works I've read, can be considered the apex of the author's craft.  They're what he was able to produce after over a decade of writing popular literature, but before he got a literal cult following that would happily pay him money for the privilege of reading Mission Earth's rape and stupidity and paranoid delusions.  And these stories are still awful.  The main character is unlikable, the plot twists rely on a universe of morons, and the underlying premise, that of an elite, untouchable group who hoards life-saving knowledge but doesn't feel obligated to use it, is deeply troubling.  Though I don't think that's what Hubbard intended for Scientology to be like, since he was interested in getting as many customers as possible.  So there's that as a positive.

The best thing I can say about them is that they aren't as soul-searingly bad as Mission Earth, and I guess they're shorter than Battlefield Earth.  And unlike Buckskin Brigades and Fear, Hubbard is writing in the genre he's at home in.  So there you have it: the Ole Doc Methuselah stories aren't good stories, but they may be the best Hubbard stories.  Which means they're ultimately kind of forgettable, sadly.