Maria and the Admiral

Maria and the Admiral

(2012) Orion

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Maria and the Admiral is my first historical fiction. I’d been thinking about writing Maria’s story ever since I visited Chile in 2004. She was an extraordinary woman, an opinionated blue-stocking, originally married to a captain in the British navy with whom she sailed the world. Her journals were published in the early eighteenth century which makes her one of the first female travel writers. Indeed if she’s known anywhere now it’s in feminist travel circles. The Chilean connection came when she arrived in Valparaiso in 1822, now a widow as her husband had died as they sailed round Cape Horn. There she met the Napoleonic war hero, Admiral Cochrane, leading a new life as head of the Chilean fleet. The two immediately became close friends. My novel takes off from there: Maria’s story but in relation to a man whose independent spirit matched her own. His marriage, earthquake, civil war, their flight to the new Brazilian court at Rio de Janeiro and her own second marriage never diminished her passionate devotion.