Aubrey–Maturin series

A contemporary diagram illustrating the exterior and rigging of a third-rate ship and the interior of a first-rate ship.

The Aubrey–Maturin series is a sequence of historical novels — 20 completed and one unfinished — by Patrick O'Brian, set during the Napoleonic Wars and centering on the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin, who is also a physician, natural philosopher, and secret agent. The 21st novel of the series, left unfinished by O'Brian's death in 2000, appeared in print in late 2004.

The 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World took material from books in this series, notably Master and Commander, HMS Surprise, The Letter of Marque and particularly The Far Side of the World. Russell Crowe played the role of Jack Aubrey, and Paul Bettany that of Stephen Maturin.

The series

1. Master and Commander (1970)
2. Post Captain (1972)
3. HMS Surprise (1973)
4. The Mauritius Command (1977)
5. Desolation Island (1978)
6. The Fortune of War (1979)
7. The Surgeon's Mate (1980)
8. The Ionian Mission (1981)
9. Treason's Harbour (1983)
10. The Far Side of the World (1984)
11. The Reverse of the Medal (1986)
12. The Letter of Marque (1988)
13. The Thirteen Gun Salute (1989)
14. The Nutmeg of Consolation (1991)
15. Clarissa Oakes (1992) - (The Truelove in the USA)
16. The Wine-Dark Sea (1993)
17. The Commodore (1995)
18. The Yellow Admiral (1996)
19. The Hundred Days (1998)
20. Blue at the Mizzen (1999)
21. The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey (2004) - (21 in the USA)

Internal Chronology

O'Brian's books were written and published in the same chronological sequence as the events as they describe, beginning with Master and Commander in 1800 and carrying through to the final novels, set shortly after Waterloo.

However, they do not strictly follow history. The first six books quickly move through twelve years of the Napoleonic Wars, as established by frequent reference to historical events, with The Fortune of War ending on 1 June 1813 with the battle between the Shannon and Chesapeake. Yet the series then enters a kind of fantasy-time in which it takes another dozen novels to progress to November 1813. Much of this period is spent at sea, with little or no connection to "real-world" events, and the events of the novels take up substantially more time than the few months 'available'. External historical reference returns with The Yellow Admiral: towards the beginning of this novel it is stated that the British army under the Duke of Wellington has entered France from Spain, therefore in November 1813. A narrative apparently lasting several months ensues before a specific arrival at Christmas 1813; thereafter the book moves swiftly through the events of Napoleon's last defeats on land, his abdication, his exile to Elba, and it ends with his escape from Elba, which was on 26 February 1815. O'Brian wrote that he had "made use of hypothetical years, rather like those hypothetical moons used in the calculation of Easter: an 1812a as it were or even an 1812b". In effect, the period June-November 1813 is stretched out to accommodate events (including marriages, the birth and growing up of children, legal battles, terms in French and British prisons, two long voyages to the Pacific, the second eventually becoming a circumnavigation of the globe, terms of blockade duty, periods on shore, shipwreck etc etc) that ought to occupy five or six years.

Narrative style

These novels adopt a narrative voice contemporary with their setting. Thus, the author-narrator employs the same idioms and vocabulary as the characters would actually have used during their times. This contrasts with many modern historical novels, in which a more contemporary tone and less period jargon might be expected. O'Brian's style is dense and his diction, trenchant. He typically constructs long, occasionally very long sentences in narrative writing. As a characteristic, O'Brian may modify a noun with a string of adjectives. Sometimes he separates the adjectives with serial commas, but more often he omits the commas, particularly when writing in the voice of the Irishman Stephen Maturin. See for comparison "...savage, fierce, dark, passionate, rough, fiery, vicious and tigerish." and "...those who called him parsimonious illiberal avaricious niggardly penurious near close or mean were mistaken..." This characteristic can be carried to an elaborate degree, as when he strings increasingly hyphenated modifiers together, as in the following: "A few were striped Guernsey-frocked tarpaulin-hatted kinky-faced red-throated long-swinging-pigtailed men-of-war's men."

The author's use of naval jargon provides another noteworthy stylistic feature, with little or no translation for the "lubberly" reader. The combination of the historical-voice narration and naval terms may seem daunting at first to some readers; but most note that after a short while a "total immersion" effect results. However, the naval lexicon can baffle any reader, and many devotees of the "POB" canon (Patrick O'Brian's work) find support in numerous companion-books. Dean H. King's A Sea Of Words provides a notable example of this type of work (other publications appear in the bibliography). An explanation given to the non-naval Maturin during his first sailing best sums up the style: Maturin asks a midshipman if he could describe the rigging and ship without using sea-terms, to which the midshipman says he would be puzzled to do that, and Maturin replies: "No, for it is by those names alone that they are known, in nearly every case, I imagine".

O'Brian's writing has an additional stylistic quirk. He quite often does not describe even fairly significant events directly. Instead he either indicates that they occurred by having characters discuss them as part of the background to the next chapter or book, or he leaves it up to the reader to make their own conclusions as to the actual backstory behind an event which has occurred. An example of this would be the mysterious deaths of two significant characters in the Thirteen-Gun Salute which are only clarified in the next book, The Nutmeg of Consolation. Another would be the opening pages of The Hundred Days, in which the conversation between two incidental characters informs the reader of the sudden death of two characters who have both featured in the series almost since its inception.

O'Brian's abrupt conclusions make for another unusual feature of the Aubrey-Maturin novels. Typically a final short sentence, usually dialogue, delivers the last plot-turn or indicates a resolution at hand. O'Brian employs no dénouement or epilogue whatsoever in most of the earlier books of the canon. Since the Aubrey-Maturin novels form a canon, readers know they will have to proceed to the next volume to uncover the details of the resolution for the one they have just finished; and some of the editions include extensive additional material (typically literary or personal comments from O'Brian) that make the ending even more abrupt by concealing how many pages remain. As he progressed past the tenth volume, O'Brian's conclusion-style became more varied. For example, The Thirteen Gun Salute ends more like a very long chapter in an ongoing tale than an independent plotline.

Characters

See also Recurring characters in the Aubrey–Maturin series

The series portrays the rise of Jack Aubrey from Lieutenant to Rear Admiral in the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Many of his exploits and reverses reflect the chequered career of Thomas Cochrane. However, his character and his politics differ markedly from those of his model.

Aubrey's friend Stephen Maturin, an Irish-Catalan physician, operates as a naturalist and spy. In his role as a naturalist he resembles Sir Joseph Banks. Maturin's long pursuit of the beautiful but unreliable Diana Villiers provides a recurring theme.

Humour

Much of the humour in the series come from the two principal characters' malapropisms. Aubrey, though a genius at sea and with practical matters, has large gaps in his understanding of everything else, as demonstrated by his clumsiness with metaphors.

Maturin, by contrast, though extremely erudite and an amateur linguist, remains perpetually doomed in his occasional attempts to use naval slang, or to explain the working of a ship to someone — though his ignorance of naval manoeuvres often serves as a useful device to describe things to the reader.

For example: Aubrey's attempting to use the occasional word of French and describing a patois as a putain; and Maturin saying "if the Admiral proves inquisitive, I may toss him off with a round turn" (as opposed to the correct phrase: to bring someone up with a round turn). This also works as a bawdy modern-day double entendre, because "to toss off" is modern-day British slang for "masturbate."

Furthermore, O'Brian sets up an extensive but subtle humorous contrast between Aubrey and Maturin. Aubrey, a masterful sailor and naval tactician, usually proves inept and unlucky in his affairs ashore; often needing to quickly take to sea to avoid his troubles on land. Maturin, on the other hand, while showing extraordinary subtlety and tact while on land, demonstrates clumsiness and ignorance when it comes to seafaring; contriving to fall out of various ships and boats and hopeless as regards the art of sailing.

O'Brian's bone-dry and cutting wit, present throughout all his novels, provides another principal source of humour in the canon. The delivery, whether in the form of narration or dialogue, seems often so forthright that the reader (or listener) may not perceive it at first. At times, however, O'Brian will spend a considerable portion of a volume setting up comedic sequences, perhaps most notably Jack's "debauchery" (by inadvertently making it drunk) of Maturin's pet sloth in HMS Surprise.

O'Brian will often have one character comment on another character's level of humour as a prime indicator of that character's emotional state. However, Aubrey's character seems much more complex. He has an almost oafish sense of humour with a heavy reliance on laborious puns, and a near complete ignorance of literature, natural philosophy and painting. On the plus side, he shows devotion to the more popular kind of opera, and plays the violin as a skilled amateur.

Frequently, O'Brian uses humour and jokes spoken or written by the characters to illustrate or develop character. Aubrey's delight in small witticisms, such as inducing Maturin to choose between "the lesser of two weevils (The Fortune of War, p.55)", recurs in the series, as does Maturin's concealed, acerbic wit — such as his statement that the shortest watches of duty on board the ship, the dogwatches, take their name because they are "curtailed" ("Cur Tailed", "cur" meaning "dog"). In another book, he suggests naming the boatswain's cat "Scourge", a play on an entirely different cat, one used by bosuns to administer punishment, known as the "Cat o' Nine Tails."

Music

Music pervades the novels: indeed the entire novel sequence begins with Aubrey meeting Maturin for the first time at a performance of a string quartet in C major by Locatelli. It has been pointed out that since Locatelli wrote no quartets this work is probably an invention of O'Brian's, though conceivably the performers could be playing a quartet arrangement of Locatelli's Concerto Grosso Op. 1 no. 10. Jack Aubrey's musicality considerably exceeds Maturin's earliest assessment of it and becomes one of the primary bases of their enduring friendship. Maturin himself plays the cello, and throughout the novels the two characters perform duets together, usually in the privacy of Aubrey's cabin, occasionally inviting other characters to take part. O'Brian displays a knowledge of music contemporary with the series. He makes frequent allusions to period music, including the works of such composers as Corelli, Mozart, Molter, Hummel, Johann Christian Bach and indeed his father Johann Sebastian Bach. Correctly for the period, the name 'Bach' means J.C. rather than J.S. to both Aubrey and Maturin. Aubrey attempts to learn a piece in The Ionian Mission which O'Brian's clues suggest is J.S. Bach's Solo Violin Partita No. 2. As he struggles with the chaconne, O'Brian writes impressively about the music, first in a technical analysis, then in a suggestion of its emotional implications. In the same novel Aubrey hopes to get a choir of seamen in HMS Worcester to perform choruses from Handel's Messiah. Aubrey and Maturin often improvise on favourite themes, folksongs or operatic airs, and passing references suggest that Maturin sometimes composes small pieces of his own.

Literary significance and criticism

In a cover-story in The New York Times Book Review published on January 6, 1991, Richard Snow characterised Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin naval adventure novels as:

... the best historical novels ever written. On every page Mr. O'Brian reminds us with subtle artistry of the most important of all historical lessons: that times change but people don't, that the griefs and follies and victories of the men and women who were here before us are in fact the maps of our own lives."

And in a Washington Post article published August 2, 1992, Ken Ringle wrote,

The Aubrey/Maturin series far beyond any episodic chronicle, ebbs and flows with the timeless tide of character and the human heart.

Patrick O'Brian once said of himself,

Obviously, I have lived very much out of the world: I know little of present-day Dublin or London or Paris, even less of post-modernity, post-structuralism, hard rock or rap, and I cannot write with much conviction about the contemporary scene.

Science fiction author David Drake has stated that his RCN Series was inspired by the Aubrey/Maturin books.

See also

• Frederick Marryat, a 19th-century pioneer of the nautical novel, who wrote under the name "Captain Marryat" — a real-life successful naval officer in the Napoleonic Wars, and thus a contemporary of Aubrey and Maturin.
• C. S. Forester, 20th-century novelist whose Horatio Hornblower series in many ways prefigured O'Brian's sea-tales.
• Thomas Cochrane, dashing and controversial captain in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars whose exploits and reverses inspired many events in the fictional careers of both Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower.

Bibliography

• Richard O'Neill (2003). Patrick O'Brian's Navy: The Illustrated Companion to Jack Aubrey's World. Running Press. ISBN 0762415401.
• Dean King (2001). A Sea of Words: Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O'Brian's Seafaring Tales. Henry Holt. ISBN 0805066152.
• Dean King (2001). Harbors and High Seas: Map Book and Geographical Guide to the Aubrey/Maturin Novels of Patrick O'Brian. Henry Holt. ISBN 0805066144.
• Brian Lavery (2003). Jack Aubrey Commands: An Historical Companion to the Naval World of Patrick O'Brian. Conway Maritime. ISBN 0851779468.
• Anne Chotzinoff Grossman, Lisa Grossman Thomas (2000). Lobscouse and Spotted Dog: Which It's a Gastronomic Companion to the Aubrey/Maturin Novels. W W Norton & Co Ltd. ISBN 0393320944.
• David Miller (2003). The World of Jack Aubrey: Twelve-Pounders, Frigates, Cutlasses, and Insignia of His Majesty's Royal Navy. Running Press Book Publishers. ISBN 0762416521.
• A.E. Cunningham (Editor) (1994). Patrick O'Brian: A Bibliography and Critical Appreciation. British Library Publishing Division. ISBN 0712310711. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
• Anthony Gary Brown (2006). The Patrick O'Brian Muster Book: Persons, Animals, Ships and Cannon in the Aubrey-Maturin Sea Novels. McFarland & Company Inc. ISBN 0786424826.

External links

• The Gunroom, a web-site and e-mail list devoted to the series. Many resources appear here.
• "Patrick O'Brian's Last"
• Patrick O'Brian Mapping Project - A Google Maps mashup project to chart the course of ships and track the movements of the main characters in all 21 books in the series.
• The Aubrey-Maturin Appreciation Society - fan group for the books on Facebook.
• "Patrick O'Brian on Music"