A reader who exhausts the joys of Aubrey-Maturin (all 20 volumes of it) may sail the seas of historical fiction from the Southern Oceans to the Gulf of Finland in search of a nautical yarn of similar quality and literary merit. Acting on a rumour picked up in a nameless smuggling port, I pursued The Requiem Shark hither and yon before finally tracking down a copy, and I can report that, while not exactly up to O’Brian’s amazingly high standards, it’s certainly a significant threat to shipping.

OK, enough pseudo-nautical claptrap. The Requiem Shark is the tale of William Williams, a young, educated man, musically trained and trying to make his way in the world on a slave ship; he experiences a forced change of career when he is taken aboard the pirate ship of the infamous Captain Bartholemew Roberts, aka Black Bart. Believing that as a musician he would be exempt from hanging if the crew were ever apprehended, Williams’ ability to read and write and his language skills give him a unique position among the crew. He quickly becomes a confidante of Black Bart, whose desperation for some kind of immortality leads him to authorise Williams to keep a journal, which he does, in code.

The voyages of Black Bart’s crew, which is a sort of crude democracy, with officers known as Lords and crew as Commons, take them all around the Atlantic, sometimes in more than one vessel, usually in pursuit of the mythically rich merchant trader the Juliette. The Juliette is a bit like Moby Dick for Black Bart, the motivating force keeping the crew moving forward together. During the course of the journey, Williams goes from an outsider to an integral part of the crew, and becomes almost like a confessor to Captain Roberts. The style of Requiem Shark is reminiscent in places of the period vocabulary and approach of O’Brian, with slightly less nautical terminology to wade through – although it does take a certain amount of understanding for granted.

It’s enjoyable enough – my main criticism is that there is not really enough sense of narrative drive. There are too many changes of ship, too many periods of downtime when ships are being careened on the beach and the crew are having adventures on shore. The Juliette serves as a device to unite the crew, but not really to drive a convincing story arc. Perhaps this is the curse of realism, because the story is based on the adventures of a real, and very successful, pirate captain. Things are redeemed somewhat by the ending, when Williams is undone by his own previous arrogant attitude to a young shipmate. Not in the league of Aubrey-Maturin, but worth looking out for nevertheless.

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