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Peter Broadbent

Gosport, 1860. Felix Wild has lived on the streets and on his wits for all his young life. He’s been a mudlark at The Hard, eaten tallow when there was nothing else to be had, picked oakum in Forton Gaol, and acquired a skill for ‘tup-tup-tupping’ from the women of Haslar. He has no family, no idea of how old he might be, and has never heard of Christmas. But he has one remarkable talent: he can make a perfect drawing, from memory, of anything that he has seen.

Saved from a further spell in prison by the wealthy William Kettle, Felix joins the Kettle household in East London and is employed to make drawings of the building of a magnificent new iron-clad vessel, HMS Warrior. 

His eagerness to learn new things knows no bounds: from working out how to use a knife and fork, and reading a dictionary from cover to cover, to being given the ‘tipsy key’ for the chronometers during his first voyage on board Warrior as she conducts sea-trials. While the men he meets are in awe of his drawing skills, the young women are absorbed in rather less cerebral matters, namely the fit of his fashionably tight ‘gas-pipe’ trousers and his distinctive looks - one eye is blue, the other green.

Felix Wild is a captivating novel that has all the affectionate humour and vivid sense of place that has made Peter Broadbent’s naval memoirs so popular.

Andrews UK

Felix Wild

Felix Wild - A Foundling on Board HMS Warrior

Felix Wild is approaching his seventeenth birthday, if the horse doctor who originally estimated his age by examining his teeth is correct. He still has the remarkable ability to memorise and draw anything he has seen, but is now looking for a fresh challenge. Studying navigation appeals to him but fate - in the shape of Admiral Millinhall-Slice - intervenes, and he is whisked away from the comfortable home of Mr and Mrs Kettle on a dangerous mission into the heart of the American Civil War aboard a blockade-runner. 

In this witty and engaging novel, Peter Broadbent creates characters worthy of Charles Dickens, including Pearly Yardstick, a carriage driver who – to the astonishment of the Kettle household – is not only a woman but one with 'the backside of an Epsom Derby winner'; Captain Achilles De'Kedge, whose walking stick was fashioned from the timbers of HMS Pickle, the ship that brought home the news of Nelson's triumph at the Battle of Trafalgar; and Doshie Dibbler, a mere thirty-three inches tall, but a perfect example of miniature womanhood.

Felix Wild and the Blockade Runners

Captain Achilles De’Kedge, veteran of the Royal Navy and mentor of young Felix Wild, has died. His wooden foot - an object strangely coveted by his friend Mrs Sparrow - takes pride of place next to his coffin at the funeral. But the Captain has left something else behind, in addition to a plethora of illegitimate offspring spread throughout the world: a bequest that will set up Felix for life. 

Before he can barely take in what this will mean for his future, Felix receives an offer from the Admiralty: to travel to China on a clipper in the Great Tea Race of 1866 and to make drawings of what he sees. The voyage takes him first from Portsmouth to Capetown on board a steamship full of female convicts (a source of fascination to the red-blooded nineteen-year-old) before he transfers to the clipper Attitude for the onward voyage. Along the way he learns what ‘owt’ means in Yorkshire dialect, why the vessel’s captain keeps two cockroaches in his beard, why ‘voracious’ is a good description of the captain’s wife Juggy, and how to fool people into thinking he speaks an obscure foreign language.

This third and final volume of the seafaring adventures of Felix Wild is a gripping read, with all the pace, wit and colour that readers have come to expect from Peter Broadbent.