Desolation Island (novel)

Desolation Island, (1978) is the fifth historical novel by Patrick O'Brian set prior to the War of 1812.

Plot summary

Jack Aubrey has been ashore for a while and is getting into difficulties due to his belief in the honesty of others in business and cards. Stephen Maturin is also in personal trouble over his relationship with Diana Villiers and his laudanum addiction. Aubrey is offered either the old HMS Leopard for a mission to Australia to support Captain Bligh against the settlers opposed to his rule, or a newly building 74 gun 3rd rate, the HMS Ajax, for sailing in the Mediterranean. Sophie Aubrey, afraid that staying at home will only make the situation worse asks Maturin for help. She eventually convinces Aubrey to take command of the Leopard, even though he will have to take some transported convicts, so that he can to help Maturin get over his disappointment regarding Diana. The actual orders for Jack are to restore Captain Bligh as Governor of the New South Wales colony after an officers' revolt had toppled him. One of the convicts, Louisa Wogan, proves to be an American spy and also a friend of Diana Villiers.

The journey is difficult, the prisoners kill their gaoler and surgeon during a storm. They also bring gaol fever on board ship. As the Leopard sails south they become stuck in the doldrums, the ship experiences a full blown epidemic. Most of the prisoners die as do many of the hands. Mr Martin, Stephen’s assistant, dies of the fever and a young man, Michael Herapath, who has stowed away to be with his lover Louisa Wogan, is rated a midshipman and becomes Maturin’s new assistant.

The Captain is forced to drop the sick crew members at Recife, Brazil to receive treatment. This leaves Aubrey with James Grant as his new first lieutenant - considered a good seaman but with little experience of warfare, and occasionally rebuked by Aubrey for countermanding his orders. While they are in port, a British ship comes into Recife and tells Aubrey of the Waakzaamheid, a 74-gun Dutch ship-of-the-line cruising the South Atlantic.

As the Leopard is sailing to the Cape of Good Hope, the Waakzaamheid is seen steering a course to cut them off from the Cape. Despite many manoeuvres, the Dutch captain seems almost supernatural in his ability to anticipate Aubrey's tactics. The Waakzaamheid's chases the Leopard south into the Roaring Forties. After many days of running downwind, the Waakzaamheid steadily gains on the Leopard and starts firing with her starboard chaser. Aubrey returns fire with his two brass nine pounders and a lucky shot shoots away the Waakzaamheid’s foremast, she is pooped by a huge wave and sinks with all 600 hands.

Being east of the Cape, the Leopard sets sail for Australia. The ship stops near an iceberg to take on ice to replace her jettisoned water but unfortunately is struck, damaging the rudder and causing a severe leak. After trying for several days to keep it afloat by pumping, Grant finally asks permission to leave the ship in the cutter once the water reaches the orlop deck. He and the hands are given permission to leave the ship heading for Cape Town (with a bundle of dispatches from Stephen), but many of Aubrey’s old shipmates and the other officers remain. The Leopard continues running east pumping all the time and finally is able to find a safe harbour in a bay of Desolation Island.

While there, Aubrey has the ship repaired but because he has no forge, cannot complete the repair of the rudder. Maturin on the other hand is in paradise as he and Herapath collect vast quantities of the local animal life for the doctor's collection. The men dine on penguin, seal and albatross eggs, much to Maturin's disgust. He claims a small island in the bay as his own, and often separates himself from the crew. An American whaler sets into the bay for supplies. They are suspicious of the British, especially since it is the Leopard as the same ship under a different commander had attacked the unprepared USS Chesapeake to recover fugitive British hands. The Americans, however, are suffering from scurvy - and their captain from a septic tooth - so they agree to have Maturin treat them in exchange for the use of their much-needed forge.

Maturin manipulates Herapath into deserting with Louisa Wogan (pregnant with his baby) to the American ship, having prepared some false intelligence which they carry with them. As the book ends, he and Barrett Bonden watch them from their island as they are taken on board the American whaler.

Characters in "Desolation Island"

Jack Aubrey - Captain of HMS Leopard.

Stephen Maturin - ship's surgeon, friend to Jack and an intelligence officer.

Sophie Williams - Jack's wife

Tom Pullings - First Lieutenant on HMS Leopard

Louisa Wogan - Prisoner on board HMS Leopard

James Grant - Second (Later First) Lieutenant on HMS Leopard

Michael Herapath - a stowaway and lover of Louisa Wogan. He becomes Maturin's surgical assistant.

Sir Joseph Blaine - a senior figure in the Admiralty's espionage department, Maturin's colleague and a fellow naturalist.

Andrew Wray - connected with the Patronage Office and the Treasury.

Ships in "Desolation Island"

The British:

HMS Leopard - 50 gun

The Dutch:

Waakzaamheid - 74 gun

Literary significance & criticism

Desolation Island marks a turning point in the Aubrey/Maturin novels. Whereas the previous four novels had featured self-contained plots (O'Brian wrote Master and Commander as a stand-alone novel, and the following three titles merely acted as sequels whose story arcs integrated only loosely with any of the other novels in the saga), in Desolation Island, O'Brian now begins an arc that will continue through the entirety of Fortune of War before concluding in The Surgeon's Mate. Some of the events set in motion in this arc will return to haunt Jack and Stephen as late as The Yellow Admiral, the eighteenth novel in the series.