Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander

Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander
by Marilyn Green Faulkner

There is no reason why I should love Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, twenty novels that trace the adventures of a sea captain and ship's surgeon in Nelson's navy around the beginning of the 1800's. To begin with, I don't sail. (My husband sails, and when he persuades me to spend an afternoon on his boat I make him nervous by gasping in horror every time the boat tips to one side or the other and by my longing gaze toward the safe, solid shore.) Before discovering O'Brian's books, I couldn't tell you the difference between a topsail and a tarpaulin. I had very little interest in ornithology, and even less interest in naval history. I still have no idea what half the technical terms in the novels mean. No, there is no reason why I should love them, except one. I love a good book, and O'Brian writes a ripping good story. I have read every one of these twenty novels with the greatest delight, and I predict that if you love to read you will too.

Patrick O'Brian died last year at a ripe old age just after completing the twentieth novel in his wildly popular series. By that time at least three million copies of his books had sold worldwide, and he had been lionized as an heir to Melville's genius. Newsletters and chat rooms devoted to his books abound on the Internet. There are whole volumes printed just to explain the difficult terminology in the novels, and two devoted fans even created a cookbook with recipes for all the dishes cooked on board the various vessels. (The book is titled Lobscouse and Spotted Dog, so you can see we are on to some different culinary ground here.) It turns out that the author's life was as interesting and mysterious as any of his characters, and we will take a look at that later in the month. For now, let me introduce you to two of my favorite characters in literature, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. Aubrey, a beefy, florid, friendly sea captain, sits down next to Stephen Maturin, a wiry, eccentric, brilliant physician and ornithologist, at a concert on page one, and a relationship begins which is among the most interesting in the canon of literature. Like millions of other readers, I never tire of these two characters. Jack persuades Stephen to go to sea as his ship's surgeon. Stephen is an abysmal sailor but the two soon develop a deep and lasting friendship. We'll drop right into the middle of the book in the thick of a terrible storm, where you get a taste of O'Brian's descriptive powers, his humor, and his deep love of everything to do with ships and the sea:

"The seas mounted higher and higher: they were not the height of the great Atlantic rollers, but they were steeper, and in a way more wicked; their heads tore off streaming in front of them so as to race through the Sophie's tops, and they were tall enough to becalm her as she lay there a-try, riding it out under a storm staysail. This was something she could do superbly well... She was a remarkably dry vessel too, observed Jack, as she climbed the creaming slope of a wave, slipped its roaring top neatly under her bows and traveled smoothly down into the hollow. He stood with an arm round a backstay, wearing a tarpaulin jacket and a pair of calico drawers: his streaming yellow hair, which he wore loose and long as a tribute to Lord Nelson, stood straight out behind him at the top of each wave and sank in the troughs between - a natural anemometer - and he watched the regular, dreamlike procession in the diffused light of the racing moon... 'She is remarkably dry,' he said to Stephen who, preferring to die in the open, had crept up on deck, had been made fast to a stanchion and who now stood, mute, sodden and appalled, behind him."

It is obvious just from this extract that O'Brian doesn't talk down to us. He expects us to know our sailing jargon, our scientific terms, and to be able to discern subtle emotional shifts in the characters with little more than a hint here and there. Reading him requires a bit of mental labor for the average landlubber. (Be honest now, when is the last time you used the word anemometer in a sentence?) But he's worth the effort. This is a fascinating period of history, when nations were battling for the last open pieces of the planet in wooden ships laden with firepower. O'Brian captures the close, difficult life aboard ship while making us feel the pure excitement of it as well. I warn you that these books deal with sailors on ships. People swear and behave badly at times, and yet O'Brian has a Victorian sense of modesty which prevents him from doing much more than hinting at the vices he describes, so you should not find much here to offend your sensibilities. At heart O'Brian is a deeply moral author, and his two main characters, unlike many protagonists in contemporary fiction, are people you will be glad to know.

I love a book that takes me somewhere I will never be able to take myself, and O'Brian's novels transport me into a world as different from my own as I could imagine. The picture of history we see here is, according to his many fans among historians, as close to reality as possible in fiction. When I put down one of these books I feel as if I have been on a voyage myself, and returned rich with treasure. For January, let's go to sea with Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander.