Ghostly touch to a sea-set thriller
IT is half a century since Peter Copley first went to sea - but he's never forgotten it.
Having spent much of his working life back on dry land, he kept his links with the sea through work with the Sea Cadets and his love of creative writing finds him rolling back the years for a new career as a novelist, with the publication of his first book, Diomed's Ghosts.
A picaresque tale which is both a ghost story and a thriller, it has been published by Pegasus, who are marketing and distributing the book.
It's the latest step in a varied career for Todmorden-born Peter, who followed 12 years as a seaman with almost 30 years with West Yorkshire Fire Service. He still works as a fire consultant with a hotel company.
But it is those early years sailing around the world that have given him plenty of raw material for his first book.
A modern thriller aimed at adults - it's pretty racy in parts and doesn't mince its language, Peter warns - it takes in fire, murder, mutiny and piracy along the way, as well as those ghosts.
Peter says: "The story is loosely based on a ship I was on. Back in 1960 I was serving as a cabin boy on an old tramp steamer.
"The crew were from all over the world and although I'm not a believer in ghosts there were some things that I can't explain. I did not see a ghost but I felt one. This phenomenan always happened around midnight and always in the dark.
"Was it a member of the crew messing about? No, I'm sure of that. My cabin door was locked and I was alone in the room. I kept these happenings to myself. A few months later I changed departments and moved to the deckhands' cabin.
"I was preparing a pot of tea for those coming off watch when I heard the new cabin boy yelling and running down the passageway. He looked terrified, and had had the same experience I'd had earlier. Some months later I was in Kobe, Japan, talking to an old sailor who had sailed on my ship some years earlier and he said to me 'don't you know that your ship is haunted.'"
Peter says he was told who the ghost was supposed to be and he has used the experience to populate the ship in his book with five ghosts, from different periods of the ship's long history, which took in wartime service.
If the dead appear to spook the ship's working class hero, Billy Brindle, the living can be equally disturbing. Peter based the ship on a broken down tramp steamer he sailed on, crewed by Greeks, Colombians, Mexicans, Sudanese and West Indians, as well as the lad from Tod.
"Most of the crew were honest, hard-working seamen, but some of them were not. The Colombians in particular were into smuggling drugs and selling the odd pistol. They'd buy a revolver for $35 in the U.S. and then sell it in Central America for anything up to $100.
"For $100 they could buy more dope to sell back in the U.S., making a good profit, and so-on, ad infinitum. I put these two events together to write Diomed's ghosts," he said.
It all makes for a hard-boiled thriller, with Brindle and his closest friends among the crew treading warily through some hair-raising incidents. Meanwhile, Billy's study of the ship's logs allow him to work out who four of the five ghosts may be. Discovering who is the little girl who speaks to him in German, is another matter.
Over the years Peter has attended creative writing classes in Hebden Bridge and has worked on the book for over a decade. Written with male readers in mind, it has nevertheless been well-received by female readers, judging from feedback he has had, he says.
His descriptions of life at sea, of how a boat is run, are vivid and with the boat's history providing the ghosts, it is certainly a star of the show, a claustrophobic setting for the action even with the world's seas to sail.
- Diomed's Ghosts by Peter Copley is published by Pegasus at 10.99. As well as being available from bookshops it can also be bought from on-line outlets including Amazon. There are some links on Peter's website, www.petercopley.com.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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