Bettie's Books

bookshelves: adventure, britain-england, historical-fiction, seven-seas, re-read, winter20092010, fraudio, pirates-smugglers-wreckers, revenge

Dr Syn by Andrew Wyeth

The swashbuckling scholar finds love and encounters a dastardly squire. Russell Thorndike's adventure read by Broadcast on:
BBC Radio 7, 1:30pm Monday 7th December 2009
Duration:
80 minutes

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Foreword by Daniel Thorndike
Preface by Sybil Thorndike
Time setting - The reign of King George III

First sentence of Chapter 1 Dymchurch-under-the-Wall:

To those who have a small knowledge of Kent, be it known that the fishing village of Dymchurch-under-the-wall lies on the south coast midway between two of the ancient Cinque Ports, Romney and Hythe.

Oh, here's to the feet that have walked the plank -
Yo-Ho! for the dead man's throttle;
And here's to the corpses afloat in the tank,
And the dead man's teeth in the bottle.

A pound of gunshot tied to his feet,
And a ragged bit of sail for a winding-sheet -
Then Out to the sharks with a horrible splash,
And that's the end of Mister Rash

And all that isn't ripped by the sharks outside
Stands up on it's feet with the running tide,
And it kept a-blowing gently, and a-looking with surprise,
At the little crabs a-scrambling from the sockets of its eyes.

It's all about smugglers - a reread for me from xxx years ago. I used to holiday as a youngster in a bungalow called Bandbox in Greatstone and the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway used to go by the tennis court at the bottom of the garden.