tonycliff
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Boat Notes
🕑 Added 2025-08-09 00:19:58 +0000 UTC
Happy August, everybody! I recently had reason to revisit Delilah Dirk's flying sailboat. There's a cheeky crop above, the top half of the image I've been working on. That's as good as the boat's ever looked, I think.
I've missed this flying boat — the Lilaea, as it's called in Pillars of Hercules. I wonder if other people have. Back when I was posting The Turkish Lieutenant online as a webcomic, I remember someone saying they were sad when DD's boat got smunched into the aqueduct. They said it felt like a character dying. As an author, that's what you like to hear.
In the first two books, DD's boat was a vague mish-mash of boaty ideas. Sorry to admit that, but looking back, that's clearly the case. By the time I was working on The Pillars of Hercules, though, I was hungry to improve its look. I wanted more verisimilitude, more believability, more of a flavour of historical plausibility — not actual historical accuracy — because it being "historically accurate" is an idiot's endeavour since — as you are aware — it flies.
But that's kind of what's special about it, right? At least, I think so. It's obviously impossible. If you have a grade-school knowledge of how flight works, you know this doesn't work. And yet… it works?
Maybe it has the same sort of quality of a stage magician's trick. You know the rabbit couldn't have been in the hat mere moments ago. You know two interlocked metal rings can't be so simply un-interlocked. You know if you cut the lady in half, you should expect a ton more gore. Maybe the boat appeals to the same part of our mind that enjoys that type of magic trick. There is no glowing plasma involved, no whirling devices, no inexplicable lightning to dazzle and distract. Just something that shouldn't work, but does, kind of, in its own way. You can't explain it, but you're able to believe it.
Of course, I did not design it with those ideas in mind. I did not start with "plausible magic" and come up with "flying sailboat." I needed a way for DD to globe-trot, I needed an excuse to do those dotted-lines-on-the-map sort of images, so I thought she could fly. And of course, combustion engines weren't around in the 1810s*. I couldn't give her one of those. That would be ludicrous. No, I'll stick with the sane and sensible idea of a flying sailboat.
Now, DD's boat is loosely based on a type of boat called a "pilot cutter."
The images above and elsewhere in this post are of a 38-foot replica cutter built in 2011, the Edith Gray. The page where I snatched the images is still up! You can learn all about her right here. As it says, the replica was based on designs from two ships from 1887 and 1901, so this type of vessel is not necessarily period-accurate to the early 1800s, but it doesn't need to be because 1) it will feel period-acceptable to the majority of readers, and I can only plead forgiveness from the others, and 2) again, it flies.
I think I remember finding some small sail ships that would have been period-accurate, but I never liked their looks. The pilot cutter has a sleek appearance that suits DD and her nonsense.
While we're talking about playing fast and loose with reality, here's what the Edith Gray looks like out of the water. You'll notice it has a much larger silhouette than I've given it in the illustration at the top of the page. It's almost a half-circle. The hull I've drawn is much shallower. I fight with myself on this, but always end up drawing the flying boats with a shallow silhouette, for the simple reason that boats don't look very boaty when they're out of the water. It doesn't look like the same sleek vessel that it is when the water is obscuring its lower half. So I cheat, and give the Lilaea a much shallower draft.
Thirty-eight feet also feels like a big boat to be sailed single-handed. DD's pilot cutter is proportionally much smaller. Compositionally, it works better that way. Otherwise, all the characters are too small. Plus, it makes the boat feel like more of a "companion," maybe. It's the feel of a laser with the aesthetics of classic tall-ship sailing. Again, I'm sure I could have found reference for a perfectly acceptable single-handed small sail boat, but the pilot cutter has a feel I like.
Look: even moored-up it looks like it wants to move, wants to go, wants to do something exceptional.
I do not think I would sleep well here, though.
I'm so happy I lucked into this flying boat as an idea. I like what it adds to the books, but I also like how it acts as a litmus test for supernatural elements as I go. "Is this more or less believable than the flying boat?" I will ask myself, tossing a dart. If the dart lands within a certain radius of The Flying Boat, then it's allowed to stay. It's plausible.
So much of this work is asking yourself, "does this feel right?" Having a tonal touchstone is very helpful.
- - - - - -
I hope all your summers and/or winters are going well. I am struggling to get things done — I may have had a bona fide meltdown the other day, please don't tell anyone. Things are getting done, but slowly. If you are having a relaxing vacation or have had one recently, please tell us all about it in the comments, transport me to your beaches and your lakes.
People have surprisingly different ideas about what makes a vacation, it's always fun to hear. One person may like sleeping in the tiny bunks on a wooden sailing yacht and working the rigging all day. Another may enjoy dissolving into a good book by the side of a quiet, mosquito-free lake, warmed by the sun but somehow, magically, not being burnt. Hypothetically speaking, of course. And you?
Back soon with progress updates as they happen!
Until then,
I remain,
more or less believable than the flying boat,
TC
* I know at least one person who might remember a draft in which DD had a propeller-driven biplane.
Comments
Tony Cliff
Ooohhh, this sounds great. We also have a "Long Beach" on Vancouver Island, which seems to betray a lack of imagination on the part of European explorers. It's not even useful as navigational aid — who's to say whether any particular beach is long enough to be "Long Beach?"
Tony Cliff
Ha ha, you were also the person who patiently explained to 26-year-old Me about Victorian dress versus Regency dress.
Tealin
It's me! I remember the biplane! I loved that biplane, I think because there was nothing magical about it, it was a completely ordinary biplane, just blatantly anachronistic. But the sailboat 'works' – it's not handwave-magical – and it has a bit more personality, I guess. And perhaps it doesn't wrongfoot as many people.
Jeremy Putnam
We visited purportedly the world's longest beach, according to all the arches approaching it anyway. There's a long peninsula in southwest Washington state called "Long Beach" and it does have a beach running the entire length of the peninsula. We mostly went to hike up and around the two lighthouses out there where the pacific meets the columbia river. Supposedly one of the largest ship graveyards in the world because of the forces involved where two such things meet.
Tony Cliff
Ha, you know, I have both a father-in-law AND a child who would want to do that. Maybe not for an entire month, but definitely some. That’s awesome. Good for him, both keeping steam alive and able to do that at 70. Just fantastic.
Ian Young
On vacations, get this: I have a friend whose big retirement travel adventure was to spend a month cross country as a volunteer on a fully-operational historical steam train. The primary duty of the volunteers is SHOVELING COAL. He's approaching 70 and this was something he chose to do, intentionally, for fun. I guess the rest of us should be so lucky as to retire with that strong a body and clarity of purpose.
