Star of the Sea: The Cresswell Chronicles
Katharine Tiernan tells the story of her ancestors, the Cresswells of Cresswell Hall in the north-east of England, from 1745 to 1807. The family saga branches into the fortunes of other families—the Easterbys and the Addisons—but the main thread we follow is that of Elizabeth Cresswell.
When we meet them, the Cresswells have dangerous links to resurgent Jacobites supporting the Catholic pretender to the English throne. Elizabeth’s father acts to prevent the family estate being confiscated and then sinks the family fortune into a poorly managed new build, following the fashion for domestic modernisation.
Meanwhile, John Addison, shipmaster, is rising fast to become a shipowner in the expanding possibilities of maritime trade, troop transport and privateering, with high risk but potential vast profits made possible by the French wars. His profits will be used to further his social ambition to become a gentleman, to be able to buy property which will make him part of the new mercantile aristocracy. He thinks it may be time to look about him for a wife.
Tiernan drops us lightly into a world recognisable from Jane Austen, a world of male companionship, the contracted partnerships of men and women, and the social and economic strategies needed to prosper. We are in a women’s world of domestic stability and risk, and we see how the young must make the transition into the married state or find economic protection in bequests.
The first half of the novel is rather disconnected with multiple viewpoint shifts as we are introduced to the range of characters, but the pace improves midway, and we are treated to an Austenesque romance. This is an immersive and convincing act of 18th-century storytelling. Kiernan skilfully fictionalises the lives of her ancestors and breathes life back into her family archives.
