Mr. Cornwell
I am a big fan of your Warrior Chronicles books and plan to expand out to other series once I finish your latest book.
Recently, I came across a term that had some historical significance and I wondered if you’d heard of it. It’s called a holiday test – now sometimes called a spark test, where we validate that a surface of a metal is completely coated to keep it from corrosion. This term comes from an old sailor’s term for inspecting the coating of the mast of a ship with tar to keep it from rot. Whenever a break in the tar was discovered, they talked about the sailor taking a “holiday” while doing the work. This term has been in use for centuries, although I don’t know how far back it goes. I wondered if you had come across it in your research, and if you knew how far back that term was used.
Thanks so much for your time and for your books.
Sincerely,
Brian M Normile