English Instructor Details Rebirth and Rebellion in ‘Southern Seahawk’

Randy Peffer takes ship on a new genre for his fifth novel

March 12, 2009 --  What turned the tide for Rafael Semmes in 1861 when, at age 51 and 10 years absent from commanding the seas, he decided to walk away from a comfortable life for one last shot of glory? Why did the naval commander resign his steady post in the U.S. Navy Lighthouse Bureau to swear allegiance to a then ship-less Confederate States Navy? No one may ever really know. But author Randy Peffer, a Phillips Academy English instructor, offers a possibility in his fifth novel, the historical narrative “Southern Seahawk.”

In this, his first novel of the Seahawk Trilogy, Peffer weaves a fascinating tale based on the true story of the Union’s “Public Enemy Number One,” a man both reviled and revered for capturing and destroying more than 80 Union ships. Using Semmes’s journey on land and the high seas as a backdrop, Peffer captures not only the breaking down of a nation, but a deep divide within the Lincoln Administration itself.

Already an accomplished mystery writer with works such as “Old School Bones,” “Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues” and “Killing Neptune’s Daughter,” “Southern Seahawk” is a diversion for Peffer in genre only. His first book, the critically acclaimed 1979 memoir “Watermen,” recounts the Pittsburgh native’s search for his ancestral roots in Chesapeake Bay. Joining the crew of a skipjack oyster boat on the Bay’s Tillman Island, Peffer discovers a thriving oyster industry dependent on the same sailboats used by his ancestors in the 1880s.

A professional mariner with more than 100,000 miles at sea in traditional sailboats, Peffer logged many of those miles as captain of PA’s research boat, the Sarah Abbot, for 14 years, until the program was discontinued in 2001. Spending six to seven weeks at a time each summer on the water provided Peffer “a lot of down time,” says the writer.
 
“When the boat was under way or the kids were off doing their science, I would read all these sea-faring novels by authors like Dewey Lambdin and Patrick O’Brien, and I thought, I can do this. But why do these naval writers always focus on Napoleonic wars and the American Revolution? And then I discovered Rafael Semmes, and I thought, this is too good to be true.”

Like Michael Decastro, his protagonist lawyer who routinely disappears aboard his father’s fishing boat in “Provincetown Follies,” Peffer discovers in Semmes a man who finds rebirth through reinventing himself: a characteristic Peffer readily admits he is drawn to and may very well share.

“Semmes is Shakespearean, larger than life—I totally identify with him,” says Peffer.  “And I see how you can get to a certain point in life and think, now what?”