Aubrey-Maturin in Brief...A Review & 10: The Far Side of the World

Ladies, gentlemen, and those below and between, we have reached the half way point of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series.  We have also reached the book that most directly inspired and gave the title to the film that made Stephen and Jack visible to far more than a broad but nevertheless niche audience.  Before we get to the book itself, let's review where the winds and currents have taken us so far.  SPOILERS beware...

 1.  Master & Commander:  The Introduction.  In the year 1800, Lt. Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin meet in Port Mahon, Minorca.  Aubrey is given his first command, HMS Sophie, and with his friend Maturin cruises the Mediterranean, taking many prizes and gaining his reputation as "Lucky Jack."  The action climaxes with a dramatic battle with the xebec-frigate Cacafuego and ends with the witnessing of the Battle of Algeciras.

2.  Post Captain:  In Love and War.  Aubrey and Maturin, during a brief peace, discover that life ashore can be at least as complicated as life at sea as they become entangled in romance, social politics, and, in Aubrey's case, debt.  The situation is not much better when the war resumes, as Aubrey suffers the command of the dubious HMS Polychrest and nearly comes to a duel with Maturin over their mutual interest in the same woman.  In the end, Aubrey is made Post Captain and professes his love for Sophie Williams, and he and Maturin are as close as friends as ever.  Maturin, meanwhile, reveals his dangerous role in British intelligence and pines for the tempestuous and unattainable Diana Villiers.

3. HMS Surprise:  Romance in the Broad Empire.  After Aubrey is pulled from the tedium of the Toulon blockade aboard the Lively, and in turn after Aubrey rescues Maturin from torture in now-Spanish-controlled Port Mahon, our duo sets sail on Lucky Jack's favorite ship on a mission for Indonesia.  Surviving near disaster in the far south seas, they reach Bombay, where Maturin continues to pursue Villiers while she is under the keeping of the rich merchant Canning. The diplomatic mission fails, but Aubrey succeeds in defending the China Fleet from the squadron of French Admiral Linois.  In Calcutta, Aubrey is celebrated and gains enough freight money to be out of debt and marry Sophie.  Maturin is forced to duel Canning; he kills him but still loses Villiers.

4.  The Mauritius Command:  The Burden of a Grand Campaign.  With the secret help of Maturin, Aubrey is saved from domestic life and given command not only of the ship Boadicea but also of a whole squadron to take Mauritius and the surrounding islands from the French.  Aubrey finds it just as difficult to keep his captains in check and bear the mantle of Admiral as it is to outmaneuver the French Admiral Hamelin.  With the help of Maturin's negotiations and propaganda, bad odds are slowly improved.  The enterprise is nearly ruined with the horrible defeat at Grand Port.  Yet Aubrey defeats Hamelin, and tho' he does not gain all the credit Mauritius is taken.

5.  Desolation Island:  A Harrowing Adventure.  Aubrey and Maturin again escape domestic entanglements with a new mission:  Aubrey is to take the Leopard to Australia with a load of convicts, while Maturin is to coerce information from one of the prisoners, a beautiful American spy named Louisa Wogan.  It is a difficult voyage.  They barely survive a gale in the Bay of Biscay.  Wogan is in love with a stowaway named Herapath.  Much of the crew is killed by gaol-fever.  They play cat and mouse with the Dutch 74 Waakzaamheid until the Dutchman is suddenly swamped in the cruel Roaring Forties.  Then the Leopard runs into an iceberg and limps to the Kerguelen Islands.  In this cold, unforgiving place, the arrival of a Nantucket whaler allows Aubrey to save his ship at the same time that Maturin succeeds in planting poisoned intelligence.

6.  The Fortune of War:  Aubrey and Maturin in America.  The doomed Leopard barely makes Malaysia, and, as Aubrey and Maturin sail back towards England, the War of 1812 against the United States breaks out.  After their ship explodes, they find HMS Java, which is soon defeated by USS Constitution.  Aubrey and Maturin are taken as prisoners to Boston.  As Aubrey recovers from dire wounds at a mad house, Maturin falls into a dangerous spy game that involves the French, Wogan, Herapath and his father, and Harry Johnson, the American "protector" of none other than Diana Villiers.  After several scrapes, Maturin gets himself, Aubrey, and Villiers to HMS Shannon, which gives the British a much-needed victory when she successfully duels USS Chesapeake.

7.  The Surgeon's Mate:  Which Maturin Finally Wins Diana Villiers.  Maturin tries unsuccessfully to convince Villiers into marriage during the celebration of the Shannon in Halifax.  Aubrey, Maturin, and Villiers head home and narrowly escape a pair of American privateers.  Skirting the perpetual personal problems of their own country, Villiers goes to France, and Aubrey and Maturin sail to the Baltic for a delicate diplomatic mission aboard HMS Ariel.  They succeed but afterwards are wrecked on the rocks near Ushant and are imprisoned in France.  Weeks later, after Maturin makes a dangerous deal with a French agent, Aubrey and Maturin escape and are reunited with Villiers.  As they sail from Calais, Maturin and Villers are finally married.

8.  The Ionian Mission:  Back at the War.  Aubrey takes command of HMS Worcester and falls into the perpetual repetition of the blockade of Toulon.  A short, unsuccessful mission to Barka fails to improve the mood.  Maturin fares not much better:  A clandestine rendezvous at the mouth of the Aigouille River ends in chaos.  The Worcester breaks during an inconclusive chase with the French fleet.  Yet this allows Aubrey to regain his dear Surprise, and he and Maturin set off to the Ionian Islands to negotiate among the Turkish Beys to take the strategically important town of Marga.  Between Maturin's mechinations and Aubrey's fierce battle with two Turkish ships, success is at last achieved.

 9.  Treason's Harbor:  Trust No One.  In Valletta on the island of Malta, Aubrey and Maturin suffer interweaving woes:  Aubrey sees Surprise sit unrepaired, Maturin sees intelligence chaos in the city, and both of their lives are complicated by Laura Fielding, the wife of a captured British officer who has been coerced into spying for the French.  The new Commander in Chief gives the two a secret mission to Mubara, but, after braving the hot sands of Sinai and a treacherous voyage down the Red Sea, Aubrey and Maturin find that they have been betrayed, and both a diplomatic coup and a chest of treasure are denied.  Back in Valletta, Maturin uses Fielding as a means to counterintelligence just before joining Aubrey, with a now able Surprise, to escort the Adriatic convoy, during which they find that Fielding's husband is alive...and jealous.  Aubrey and Maturin receive another mission, this time to Zambra, but it's failure again as the French are once more alerted and destroy the British 64-gun Pollux, and the Surprise runs for Gibraltar.

In pseudo-chronological time, perhaps fifteen years have gone by.  Aubrey has obtained his captaincy; married; realized he's better off at sea, tho' better on a single warship than commanding a fleet of squabbling commanders; gained, lost, and regained his favorite ship; and ventured to locales from the Mediterranean to India to nearly Antarctica.  Maturin, in addition to following his friend everywhere, has seen (and been denied) many natural wonders, battled his own inner demons, won the difficult heart of his soul mate, saved many a wounded seaman, spied and been spied upon, and survived innumerable scrapes with death.

The Far Side of the World is, perhaps, Aubrey and Maturin's most far-flung adventure.  Some of the things you know from the movie are here:  Hollom the "Jonah," the rounding of Cape Horn, the Galapagos.  Yet I must hasten to remind you that the movie picked and chose from the whole O'Brian series, and even the plot lines that came directly from the book bear in many cases only scant resemblance to their literary source.  Trust me, the film is great, on its own or as a 'Best of O'Brian.'  But put away the IMDB, clear your mind, and let this fabulous voyage unfold without expectation...

"Nelson at Gibraltar" by Gordon Frickers

(1) In Gibraltar, Capt. Jack Aubrey nervously waits to report the failed mission to Zambra to the Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir Francis Ives.  The Surprise is doomed to be condemned, and the once cheerful ship has become a dismal place, her crew to be scattered and her captain with no clear certainty of a command.  On the streets, Aubrey encounters Mr. Hollom, an unlucky perpetual midshipman who had served under him aboard the Lively, and against his better judgment Aubrey takes pity on Hollom and orders him aboard the Surprise.  Aubrey dines with the Fieldings; having been rumored to have had an affair with Mrs. Fielding, Aubrey fears the evening, but he finds that the air has already been cleared.  Dr. Stephen Maturin, meanwhile, receives a letter from the head of British naval intelligence, Sir Joseph Blaine, congratulating him on his coup against French spies in Valletta and hinting at American operations in the Pacific.  Aubrey finally reports to Ives and is pleasantly surprised when he is congratulated for the destruction of the French two-decker Mars.  Even more happily, Aubrey and the Surprise are saved from doom and ordered to intercept the American frigate Norfolk, which is on its way to the Pacific to harass British whalers.  As usual, there is not a moment to be lost.