Pirates & Privateers:Will Sofrin's Books

In 1969, two events occur that get little media coverage. Shipwrights in Nova Scotia build a replica of a British Royal Navy frigate from the eighteenth century. A novel by Patrick O’Brian, an author not widely known, is published. The ship will be christened Rose; the book, the first in a nautical series, is entitled Master & Commander.

Fast forward to the fall of 2001. A young man returns from Europe after 9/11 uncertain what he will do next. In France, he could afford to spend $300 on champagne; now, he’s in Newport, Rhode Island, working on a tall ship for minimal pay. It’s not the work he wants to do, but his choices are limited. The vessel is a full-rigged ship with a length of 179 feet and 30.5 feet at her widest point amidships. The tallest of her three masts rises 130 feet above the water. Unlike the day she was launched, she is shabby and of questionable seaworthiness. Her name is Rose, and he is Will Sofrin. By the time she’s ready to set sail, he joins the crew as a deckhand and ship’s carpenter. He is familiar with sailing, but has never sailed aboard a tall ship before. The remaining crew consists of men and women, some experienced hands and others with little to none. Her captain is Richard Bailey, “a legend in the tall ship community” and the man who saved the frigate from the scrapyard. (23)

During the next three months – a timeframe that doesn’t allow much wiggle room – he and the others must make the frigate ready for a voyage that will take her from the Atlantic Ocean, across the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal, into the Pacific Ocean, and north to California. Rose has been purchased to be a prop in a new movie by Twentieth Century Fox. She will become HMS Surprise for Peter Weir’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Along the way, they battle rough seas, gale-force winds, boredom, and low morale. They live in less-than-desirable conditions, and encounter problems that can spell disaster for the ship and themselves.

Sofrin includes technical drawings, tables, and black-and-white photographs to help us better understand the ship and to get to know her crew. Measurements are provided in feet and meters. When using nautical language, he explains these terms in everyday terms to which we can relate. One example is when they find themselves encountering sustained winds of sixty knots and waves twenty to thirty feet high: “It felt like being in a pinball machine, bouncing from one hard surface to the next.” (106)

From start to finish, All Hands on Deck takes us on a stunning and personal journey. Contrary to our romantic notions of sailing aboard a wooden ship, Sofrin offers a frank and honest account of his experiences and his shipmates, as well as tying up loose ends once the ship is delivered. At the same time, he compares his life aboard Rose with what it was like for Royal Navy seamen in the late eighteenth century. He also recounts Patrick O’Brian’s story and how he created his characters, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. In small, but memorable, ways, we experience what Sofrin experiences and it is a voyage we are unlikely to forget.

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