A Brooding Storm in the Arabian Gulf
I’m delighted to announce that my latest book, Silkworm! has been published. It isn’t about the 18th century sailing navy but nevertheless the subject will be of interest to Carlisle & Holbrooke readers.
Silkworm! is a dramatized account of four days in the life of a fictional Royal Navy guided missile destroyer HMS Winchester during the Arabian Gulf Tanker War in 1988. That was the year that USS Samuel B. Roberts hit an Iranian mine, USS Vincennes shot down a commercial airliner and Operation Praying Mantis decimated the Iranian Navy in an afternoon.
I’m tempted to call it recent historical fiction, but to me it’s not history until there’s been a definite end point to the events, and that’s certainly not the case in the Arabian Gulf. When I look at the news from the Middle East it all sounds very familiar.
Silkworm! is heavily influenced by my own experiences as the operations officer of HMS Exeter during that period, but it’s definitely not autobiographical; it’s fiction and the ships and all the characters are invented.
In the late twentieth century the world economy was fuelled by oil, most coming from the Arabian Gulf. Giant seaborne tankers brought their cargoes through the Straits of Hormuz and into the oceanic trade routes. All the Gulf nations had an interest in keeping the oil flowing until Iran attempted to close the Straits in the nineteen-eighties. Iran laid mines and used frigates and armed speedboats to intercept the defenceless merchant ships. However, their most dangerous weapon was the Silkworm anti-ship missile, which they deployed to launch sites along their shore. Western nations responded by sending naval task groups to clear the mines and to escort the tankers through the Straits and out of the Gulf. A whole generation of Royal Navy sailors knew this as the Armilla Patrol.
Silkworm! is published today in Kindle and Paperback formats, but it might take a few days to be available in your regional Amazon store.
My next book will be the seventeenth in the Carlisle & Holbrooke series, set during the period of peace between the Seven Years War and the American War of Independence.
AUDIO EDITIONS
David Lane Pusey is narrating the whole Carlisle & Holbrooke series, book-by-book, and producing them in audio format. He’s presently working on #14 An Upright Man which will be available during the summer. I hope that the audio edition of Silkworm! will be published in the winter of 2025 or the spring of 2026.
