A Phoenician tale
Following on from the last note about how to use historical incidents in fiction for a Writing Magazine story, I’ve found that sometimes a story comes from history that needs only some good publicity; the whole plot is there for the taking. When I was preparing for a talk on the influence of trade on Anglo Scottish relations, I came across the following quote from Strabo in a book called The Tin Islands by Arthur Eedie:- Anciently, the Phoenicians alone, from Gades (Cadiz), engrossed this market, hiding the navigation from all others. When the Romans followed a certain shipmaster, that they might discover the market, the jealous shipmaster wilfully stranded his vessel on a shoal, misleading those who were tracking him, to the same destruction. Escaping from the shipwreck by means of a fragment of the ship, he was indemnified for his losses out of the public treasury.
I have no names for either the ship captain or the Romans, nor does it say how any of them got back to Phoenicia or Rome, but it cries out for elaboration. Travel insurance and all kinds of complexities. What did the captain tell the insurance investigator? Did the investigator believe him? What did the Roman captain tell the senate at the court martial?