H. Taprell Dorling H. Taprell Dorling Captain Henry Taprell Dorling (1883-1968) was a British sailor, author, and journalist who served in the Royal Navy during both world wars, giving his marine fact and fiction a notable authenticity. His Pincher Martin, O.D. (1916) is widely referenced as the source for Pincher Martin (1956) by Nobel prizewinner William Golding. He wrote under the name Taffrail. Dorling was born in Berwick, the second son of Colonel Francis Dorling, and named Taprell Henry, but later changed the order of his names. He entered the HMS "Britannia" in August 1897, his 1113 marks placing him fifty-eighth in merit
The Spire is used towards the end of the novel, where Jocelin lies dying. Jocelin declares "it's like the apple-tree!", making a reference to the Garden of Eden and Humanity's first sin of temptation but also perhaps the pagan ideas that have been constantly threaded into Jocelin's mind as he spends more and more time up in the Spire, raised above the ground (and further away from his church and his role as God's voice on earth). Jocelin's degrading spine can be seen as a micro-macro analogy to the unstable spire. He believes the former manifests as the presence of his angel