Reminiscences of the South China Sea by A Lady

Thanks to The National Maritime Museum Greenwich via Adventures in Historyland

Title: Reminiscences of the South China Sea 

Author: A Lady

Publisher: Not known 

Source book: Away With the Fairies by Kerry Greenwood (Phryne Fisher #11)

Phryne Fisher is worried that Chinese pirates have kidnapped her lover, Lin Chung, and is planning a rescue if it seems possible. So she ransacks the library at The Adventuresses Club for anything that might be helpful. She finds The Life and Death of Scarlatt Blackbones, Pyrat, a Guidebook to Hong Kong, volume nine of The Newgate Chronicle or the Malefactors Bloody Register and a small shabby book called Reminiscences of the South China Sea by A Lady.

Phryne is wary of books by ‘a lady’ as they often turn out to be pornographic. However, this book is by a woman who had been the concubine of one of the White Raja’s young men.  He had taught her English and she had taught him the local language. Her grandmother had been a pirate with the famous Shap-‘ng-tsai, whose fleets had been wrecked by an expedition under Commander Dalrymple in 1849.

While Phryne enjoys the little book [I would definitely read the Lady’s book - I’m sure it would be fascinating] it doesn’t really help her in her quest to rescue Lin Chung.

The only other place I can find any reference to The Life and Death of Scarlatt Blackbones, Pyrat is in The Midnight Folk by John Masefield. Kerry Greenwood seems to enjoy pinching little details from other authors (and why not?), so that sounds about right. Scarlatt Blackbones is no help to Phryne at all, being about eighteenth century Port Royal (in Jamaica) scoundrels so she loses interest in it.

Thanks to The Daily Mail