As Captain Jack Aubrey sails away from the hated Australian prison colonies he soon becomes aware that he is out of touch with the mood of the ship. What he doesn't know is that there is a potentially dangerous stranger aboard ship.
“The Aubrey-Maturin series . . . ebbs and flows with the timeless tide of character and the human heart."—Ken Ringle, Washington Post A British whaler has been captured by an ambitious chief in the Sandwich Islands at French instigation, and Captain Jack Aubrey is dispatched with the Surprise to restore order. But stowed away in the cable-tier is an escaped female convict. To the officers, Clarissa Harvill is an object of awkward courtliness and dangerous jealousies. Aubrey himself is won over and indeed strongly attracted to this woman who will not speak of her past. But only Aubrey’s friend, Dr. Stephen Maturin, can fathom Harvill’s secrets: her crime, her personality, and a clue identifying a highly-placed English spy in the pay of Napoleon’s intelligence service. In a thrilling finale, Patrick O’Brian delivers all the excitement his many readers expect: Aubrey and the crew of the Surprise impose a brutal pax Britannica upon the islanders in a pitched battle against a band of headhunting cannibals.
At the outset of an adventure filled with disaster and delight, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin pursue a prize through the stormy seas and icebergs south of Cape Horn, where the hunters suddenly become the hunted.
This book provides summaries and analyses of more than 250 novels and nearly 30 films and examines the extent to which they accurately reflect the history, mores and manners of the period--and the extent to which they reveal the ideas and attitudes of their authors and of the periods in which they were written. Particular emphasis is placed on the nature and importance of the war at sea for the British and on the role of famous naval officers such as Nelson, Pellew, Duncan, Smith and Cochrane in the defeat of Napoleon.
"There are those already planning this afternoon's trip to the bookstore. Their only reaction is: Thank god, Patrick O'Brian is still writing. To you, I say, not a moment to lose."—John Balzar, Los Angeles Times Life ashore may once again be the undoing of Jack Aubrey in The Yellow Admiral, Patrick O'Brian's best-selling novel and eighteenth volume in the Aubrey/Maturin series. Aubrey, now a considerable though impoverished landowner, has dimmed his prospects at the Admiralty by his erratic voting as a Member of Parliament; he is feuding with his neighbor, a man with strong Navy connections who wants to enclose the common land between their estates; he is on even worse terms with his wife, Sophie, whose mother has ferreted out a most damaging trove of old personal letters. Even Jack's exploits at sea turn sour: in the storm waters off Brest he captures a French privateer laden with gold and ivory, but this at the expense of missing a signal and deserting his post. Worst of all, in the spring of 1814, peace breaks out, and this feeds into Jack's private fears for his career. Fortunately, Jack is not left to his own devices. Stephen Maturin returns from a mission in France with the news that the Chileans, to secure their independence, require a navy, and the service of English officers. Jack is savoring this apparent reprieve for his career, as well as Sophie's forgiveness, when he receives an urgent dispatch ordering him to Gibraltar: Napoleon has escaped from Elba.
These five volumes are a perfect gift for the serious O'Brian enthusiast. Now, four years after O'Brian's death, his estate has agreed to release the chapters of the novel he was working on when he died. It is both fitting and moving that in these pages we are given a glimpse of Jack Aubrey raising his admiral's flag at last.
Now in its second edition, this expanded work catalogs every person, animal, ship and cannon mentioned by name in the 21 books of Patrick O'Brian's series on the maritime adventures of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. The novels, renowned for their "far-ranging web of wit and allusion," teem with thousands of characters and ships, both imaginary and historical. From Master and Commander to 21: The Unfinished Voyage, this book distinguishes the fictional from the factual, making a useful series companion for the casual reader and the most ardent fans. Each of the more than 5,000 alphabetized entries provides a reference to the novels and chapters in which the topic appears. Additionally, biographical notes on the historical figures are included, with sources provided in an annotated bibliography.
The fourteenth novel in the classic Aubrey-Maturin series finds Aubrey and Maturin shipwrecked, harassed by pirates and then in the brutal penal colonies of New South Wales.