J. D. Davies is an historian and author. Born in in Llanelli on the coast of south-west Wales, a treacherous coast notorious for shipwrecks, the sea has always exerted a strong pull on his life and a fascination with warships and naval history can probably be dated to a family holiday in Portsmouth.
He found that very little had been published about the seventeenth century navy since the 1920s, and that most of the books that did exist seemed to side unthinkingly with Samuel Pepys, accepting uncritically his opinions and evidence about the issues of the time. He has written factual books about the period and has now started a series of naval fiction also set in the time of Charles II and the Anglo-Dutch Wars.
Age of Sail: Fiction
AOS Naval Fiction |
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| Series: The Journals of Matthew Quinton | ||
| Year | Book | Comment |
| 1598 | The Rage of Fortune | A window into Mathew Quinton’s origins |
| Ensign Royal | Matthew attempts to elude the Lord Protector's feared Ironsides before facing his destiny on the beaches of Dunkirk (Short Story) | |
| 1661 | Gentleman Captain | Charles II has been restored to the English throne. He gives Quinton command of a ship and a delicate mission. |
| 1663 | The Mountain of Gold | In the Mediterranean, Quinton captures a Corsair pirate under the nose of a furious Maltese Knight |
| 1665 | The Blast That Tears The Skies | Quinton, in command of a vast and ancient man-of-war, finds himself at the heart of the Battle of Lowestoft |
| 1666 | The Lion of Midnight | Quinton is sent on a mission to the Swedish court at Gothenburg |
| 1666 | The Battle of All the Ages | Quinton finds himself in the thick of the action at the Four Days' Battle |
| 1666 | Death's Bright Angel | A great fire consumes London |
| 1671 | The Devil Upon the Wave | Sir Matthew Quinton is on a mission of vengeance, four years in the making. |
| Series: Jack Stannard of the Navy Royal Trilogy | ||
| Year | Book | Comment |
| Destiny's Tide | When Henry VIII dissolves the monasteries and wages war, Jack must take up his family destiny at the head of the Dunwich fleet | |
| Battle’s Flood | Jack is sent on an extraordinary mission to Africa and the Caribbean with John Hawkins and Francis Drake. | |
| 1588 | Armada's Wake | The greatest naval force of its age bears down upon England and Jack Stannard is stationed on Drake’s warship Revenge |
| Series: The Philippe Kermorvant Thrillers | ||
| Year | Book | Comment |
| 1793 | Sailor of Liberty | Philippe’s loyalty to the republic will be tested to breaking point in a life-or-death battle on the high seas |
| Tyranny's Bloody Standard | Philippe returns to France and gains command of a frigate in the Mediterranean | |
| The Cursed Shore | Kermorvant, unfairly dismissed from the French Revolutionary Navy, accepts command of a privateer | |
Non-Fiction
AOS Naval Non-Fiction |
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| Series: n/a | ||
| Year | Book | Comment |
| Pepys's Navy: Ships, Men and Warfare 1649-89 | Describes every aspect the English navy in the second half of the seventeenth century | |
| Gentlemen and Tarpaulins: The Officers and Men of the Restoration Navy | Study of the Royal Navy during the reigns of Charles II and James II | |
| A Brief History of Fighting Ships | Tells the story of one of the keys to that great conflict, the Ship of the Line | |
| Britannia's Dragon | A Naval History of Wales. Revised and updated as:-The Naval History of Wales: Unleashing Britannia's Dragon | |
| Kings of the Sea: Charles II, James II and the Royal Navy | It has always been widely accepted that the Stuart kings had an interest in the navy and more generally in the sea | |
The author’s official web site is jddavies.com