Happy Birthday, Patrick O’Brian!
Patrick O’Brian, the author of the Aubrey-Maturin seafaring novels, would have been 104 years old today. Mr. O’Brian passed away in 2000 but left behind a treasure of twenty meticulously researched historical sea novels set in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. The books center on the friendship and adventures of its two main characters: Jack Aubrey, a British naval officer, and Stephen Maturin, the ship’s surgeon, naturalist, and part-time intelligence agent.
As a sailor, I appreciate the technical portions of driving a tall ship on the open sea. I’ll admit, even with many years of sailing experience, I don’t fully understand all the jargon that describes the maneuvering of these massive ships from 300 years ago, but I do get the gist of it. I delight in sailing along with Captain Aubrey from my comfortable armchair, plowing through hurricanes and typhoons, avoiding icebergs, clawing off a lee shore in a tempest, even fleeing an erupting volcano in the middle of the ocean.
It’s not always foul weather and danger: I revel in the many lovely passages depicting beautiful weather, trade winds pulling the ship along at 12 knots over an easy rolling sea that brings smiles to the officers and crew alike. And of course, there are the gruesome depictions of sea battles, frigates gliding along through thick smoke, cannons blasting huge iron balls through the hulls and rigging of their enemy, spars shattering, men dying instantly in bloody rivers on the deck, or later on the archaic operating table in the ship’s cockpit.
…