Island in the Sea of Time

1998

Nantucket is an island off the coast of New England probably.

By the end of the twentieth century, it's home to a wide variety of people, both native born and incomer. And totally dependant on the mainland for it's food. So when the island is blanketed in a bubble, cutting it off from all forms of communications, they are all worried about the future.

When the effect comes to an end there is an initial sense of relief even though the radios and televisions are still not working.

It's left to the local astronomer to work out the awful truth.

Whatever the effect was, it had not just blanketed the radio and television stations, but had sent the whole island back in time. Not a few years, not a few centuries, but almost 3,000 years!

No radio. <shudder>No Internet</shudder>. No petrol. No diesel to fuel the ships. Not enough food to feed the population!

Those are the negatives.

On the positive front, the Americans are a steel age civilisation in a bronze age world and a number of the ships in the harbour are capable of sailing under sail. And capable of transatlantic voyaging. And they have a mass of trade goods. And knowledge of course. No television <G>. All the local fishing grounds were pristine too, and spring saw the return of a sight that had not been seen since the last passenger pigeon died in the eighteen hundred; skies black with flocks of the creatures.

The first thing they have to do, though, is to survive the first winter with completely inadequate planting and reserves.

Their ocean going sailing ship, a Coast Guard training ship, was sent on a mission across the Atlantic to a group of islands that would have been known as the British Isles, where the harvest would be in, to trade for grain and livestock. Despite their best efforts, they get drawn into the invasion that is currently under way, but they don't like the people where they initially land. Especially when the captain of the Coast Guard vessel was given a prisoner as her personal slave.

Back on the island, there was a band of ecological nutters who decided to arm the local natives in order to defend themselves against the future rampages of the Americans. As they had taken the wife of the Nantucketian leader prisoner, they are followed closely by the Coast Guard but they are not caught until they get first hand experience of the natives they are trying to save. After that they find that one of the Coast Guard crew has rebelled and taken his own selection of hostages, a much better selection in a way, and has plans to set up his own kingdom...

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