Aubrey/Maturin novels
Training ship Thor Heyerdahl in Lerwick harbour, Shetland
I’ve just finished reading Patrick O’Brian’s Blue at the Mizzen, the twentieth and last of the historical novels about the lives and doings of Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr Stephen Maturin, naval surgeon, secret agent and Aubrey’s close friend. The first of the series is Master and Commander, which is probably the one most people will have heard of because of the film starring Russell Crowe.
The Bombardment of Algiers by the Royal Navy in 1816
This is what one critic writes about these wonderful novels:
Why do the sea-faring adventure novels of Patrick O’Brian enjoy such a phenomenally devoted readership? Actually, O’Brian enthusiasts can take their pick from a variety of qualities of excellence: the sheer command of writing technique; the adroit characterisation of his heroes, every bit as rich and well-rounded as anything in serious fiction; and, of course, the bracingly-realised atmosphere of the sea on which the author sets his tales of derring-do.
As a boy I read all the Hornblower novels, which I just loved. But the Aubrey/Maturin novels knock Hornblower into a cocked hat (an appropriate metaphor, given that cocked hats were usual apparel in the late 18th and early 19th century, which is when the Aubrey/Maturin novels are set). O’Brian’s main characters show their weaknesses as well as their strengths, and O’Brian is not afraid to allow his characters to suffer - sometimes to die.
“Lucky” Jack Aubrey is one of the most celebrated captains of the King’s Navy, as the traditionalists (like Jack Aubrey) called it and is famous for his brave actions, many of which gain him and his men large amounts of prize money. But he’s not so lucky on land and makes some serious mistakes in handling his money and his small estate. He has enemies at court as well as friends and his career is not a conventional one for the time, since he is often sent on special missions to take Maturin to do his secret agent stuff.
Maturin starts out as a complete landlubber and the complexities of an 18th century man-of-war are revealed to us through the explanations given him by the sailors of what the masts and sails and various bits of rigging do. O’Brian uses naval terminology of the time without explanation, so it’s useful, when reading the novels, to have some kind of reference book at hand. The one I like is Patrick O’Brian’s Navy, a beautifully illustrated history of the naval world that Jack Aubrey would have known.
The line-of-battle ships and the frigates of the Royal Navy of the late 18th and early 19th centuries were the most complex machines of their day. Their effectiveness in battle depended utterly on the skills of highly trained crews. The most effective ships were not those commanded by tyrannical officers who meted out terrible physical punishments for the least offence; the most effective ships were those in which the crew’s hearts and loyalty were given to their captain. Jack Aubrey was a “tight” captain: he expected - and got - absolute discipline, not by flogging his men within an inch of their lives, but by being fair, by caring for his men, and by being a matchless naval tactitian.
O’Brian’s writing has many strengths, not least of which are his ability to delineate character and his descriptions of naval battles. These descriptions take one right inside the battle, with all the noise and confusion and smoke and blood. Tension rises and the outcome is never a foregone conclusion. Beyond that, the feeling he conveys of living in a wooden-walled ship and travelling vast distances across the planet, utterly dependent on the wind and waves and on the stores that the ship is carrying, is unparalleled in my view. O’Brian himself was (he passed away in 2000) a sailor and loved the sea and ships.
Technorati Tags: Patrick O’Brian, novels, Aubrey, Maturin, Navy, ships, frigates
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3 comments
In the past I have read Scientific American studies about the value of money spent on the Navy…what I remember is something about the British example leading up to WWI. Pretty sad….because all these super class destroyers had to be planned years and years in advance and the process put into motion. I am supposing that At least in the days of the sailing ship the latest technological discoveries made or stolen could be implimented “rather quickly” (with a year or two?)
And studies under real conditons…to hell with the pilot/test studies, right?
They didn’t do modeling in those days did they?
Ship-building was a mixture of tradition and rational design in those days. There were naval architects who were trying to improve the sailing qualities of the ships and to strengthen the hulls.
Interestingly, different nations’ ships were known for different qualities. French warships, for example were known to be beautifully designed, to be “weatherly”, and to sail close to the wind (there’s another of those metaphors) - an important point if you were trying to gain the advantage over your enemy.
During the Napoleonic wars British ships were built to standard designs and there were different “classes” of ship. But individual members of a given class of ship could well have rather different sailing qualities - so much depended on the shipwrights who built the vessels.
Inevitably the Navy was always short of cash and some ships continued in service long after they had been rendered obsolete by new developments in naval design; sometimes their timbers were rotten and they were not safe, but still they continued in service.
Not so different from now, I think…
You mentioned that the performance of the best British ships didn’t depend on technology as much as the loyalty of the crews towards a benevolent captain. (I wonder how that could be measured?) This probably came from the influences of rise of social movements outside the military..This is the 18th century we are talking about, right? I wonder how many of these benevolent captains existed?
While that was happening in 18th century in England it wasn’t until the early 20th century that it happened in Japan.
In the history of Hirohito, The army and navy officers however, at the time of the end of WWI, became increasingly isolated from society,which was experiencing a reaction to fall of the European Monarchies.
The Japanese Monarchy filled the role of preserving the military’s influence in society, just to tie in this thread with the other one. As democratic philosophies were gaining strength in Japanese society, because of the debilitation of the Taisho Emperor, the landed gentry who constituted the officer caste in the military, needed a savior to restore the status quo. This is why the education, training and preparation of Emperor Hirohito was so important for them.
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