The Ships of Jack Aubrey

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Like any stout-hearted Royal Navy midshipman or lieutenant, Jack Aubrey hungered for glory and for command of a ship. Indeed, the two were vitally connected, for the first was a path to the second and the latter -- with luck -- could bring the former. In the very first chapter of the first volume in Patrick O'Brian's magnificent series of novels about Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin, Aubrey obtained his first real command on April 19, 1800. And glory followed.

This web page explores all of Jack Aubrey's vessels from the small sloop-of-war HMS Sophie of which he takes command at the beginning of Master and Commander through more than a dozen other sloops, frigates and ships-of-the-line until we leave him in 21: The Final, Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey on the ship-of-the-line Suffolk, having raised his flag as rear admiral. And for any who might protest at the imprecision in the title of this page, the Sophie being only a brig and thus not truly a ship by the definition of the sea, I must fall back upon the sage words of that eminent nautical authority, Stephen Maturin: "Let us not be pedantical, for all love!"

For more than a decade I have been an avid fan of the nautical novels of Patrick O'Brian, an enthusiasm growing out of my long-standing interest in naval warships of the "Age of Fighting Sail" perhaps first sparked by childhood visits to "Old Ironsides". Oftentimes while reading these marvelous books, I have reached for the reference volumes on my shelves to better understand exactly what kind of vessel Jack Aubrey was commanding in the book in hand. And often I thought how convenient it would be to have a single source available to quickly find the basic information about the vessels, to look at their plans, and to compare one ship with another. These web pages are my effort to provide such a source of information.

In many cases, Patrick O'Brian put Jack Aubrey aboard real Royal Navy vessels of the era of the Napoleonic Wars, although frequently the author altered the actual histories of those ships to fit the world of his fictional hero. At other times, ships commanded by Aubrey had clearly identifiable historical prototypes, but with names and circumstances changed for the novels. For these historical vessels, whether commanded by Aubrey under their actual name or one fictional, a description of that ship is given below, accompanied by basic technical data and an image of the actual ship plans. Occasionally O'Brian invented a warship without obvious specific precedent. In those cases, a genuine vessel of appropriate design has been selected for presentation, again with data and plans.

Bruce Trinque
Amston, CT
March, 2006

Ships' Technical Data

In general the information given for each vessel is that applicable at the time of the original commissioning in the Royal Navy. Although the hull dimensions generally remained essentially unchanged throughout a ship's career (except in cases of major rebuilds of a type not applicable to any of Aubrey's commands), crew size and armament sometimes did substantially alter over years and decades of service. Gun types and quantities especially shifted around the beginning of the 19th Century when short-ranged but powerful carronades replaced many of the smaller-caliber long guns carried on quarterdecks and forecastles. Thus, the weaponry information presented here is not necessarily correct in all details for the period of Jack's Aubrey's command of the ship in question, although usually the main battery of guns is the same (a notable exception is HMS Surprise which under Aubrey's command typically carried 12-pound long guns, not the 9-pounders of the original armament scheme nor their 32-pound carronade replacements). Nominal crew sizes were adjusted from time to time and, of course, ships frequently served with crews under authorized strength.

An Explanation of Dimensions

Four dimensions are given for each ship. These are
Length - The length of the Lower Deck (the "lower deck" on a ship-of-the-line was that deck upon which the heaviest guns were placed; for frigates it was the deck immediately below the deck holding the main battery of cannons). This is the rough equivalent of "length between perpendiculars" for modern ships.
Keel - Not the length of the actual keel, but an artificial number used for calculations of tonnage.
Breadth - The "moulded" breadth at the widest part of the hull, "moulded" meaning the measurement was made to the outside of the hull frame, but inside the external planking.
Hold - The "depth in hold" was another artificial number sometimes used in calculating tonnage.
The dimensions cited for ships built for the Royal Navy are "as built" figures, if available; otherwise they are from the design plans; those for foreign prizes are "as built" figures taken during a survey after capture.

Tonnage

An artificial figure indicating not "displacement" as with modern ships (in essence, the weight of the ship) but a theoretical carrying capacity or "burthen". By the late 18th Century the standard formula for calculating tonnage was known as the Builders Old Measurement in which the Length minus three-fifths of the Breadth was multiplied by the Breadth times one-half the Breadth and then divided by the number 94, yielding the calculated tonnage of burthen (and explaining why the tonnage of vessels of this era usually include an odd fraction with "94" as the divisor). An equivalent technique was to multiply the Keel times Breadth times one-half Breadth and then divide by 94. The significance of such tonnage figures is that they permit a standard for a comparison of the relative overall size of different ships.

Sources

All technical data are taken from the late David Lyon's The Sailing Navy List: All the Ships of the Royal Navy Built, Purchased and Captured, 1688-1860 (Conway Maritime Press, 1997) and Rif Winfield's British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1793-1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates (Chatham Publishing, 2005), with the relevant pages cited in each section. The ship plans come from several sources designated hereafter with page citations as: Boudriot - Jean Boudriot's The History of the French Frigate, 1650-1850 (Jean Boudriot Publications, 1993)
Gardiner - Robert Gardiner's Warships of the Napoleonic Era (Chatham Publishing, 1999)
Goodwin - Peter Goodwin's Nelson's Ships: The History of the Vessels In Which He Served, 1771-1805 (Stackpole Books, 2002)
Lavery [74] - Brian Lavery's The 74-Gun Ship Bellona (Naval Institute Press, 1985)
Lavery [JAC] - Brian Lavery's Jack Aubrey Commands (Naval Institute Press, 2003)
Lyon - David Lyon's The Sailing Navy List (Chatham Publishing, 2005)
NAN - Robert Gardiner's (editor) Nelson Against Napoleon: From the Nile to Copenhagen, 1798-1801 (Naval Institute Press, 1997)

The Ships

HMS Sophie

"... 'she was a slow brig, an old brig and a brig that was very unlikely to make his fortune'."

1800 - 1801: Jack Aubrey's first command, described in Master and Commander is the brig-rigged "sloop" HMS Sophie, operating out of Port Mahon in the western Mediterranean. Towards the end of the novel, the first book in the series, the Sophie is captured on the Spanish coast by a French squadron led by Admiral Charles-Alexandre Léon Durand, Comte de Linois.
Although the activities of the Sophie and her dimensions and armament were modeled closely on those of real-life HMS Speedy, commanded by Thomas, Lord Cochrane, the quarterdeck - unusual for a small sloop - was taken from HMS Vincejo, captured from the Spanish navy in 1799. Indeed, In the novel the Sophie is pointed out by one naval officer as being the former "Vencejo" - an alternative spelling - although in fact the Vincejo kept its original name while serving in the Royal Navy until captured by the French at Quiberon Bay in 1804. The Speedy, like the fictional Sophie, was captured in 1801 by Linois.

The data below are for HMS Speedy (Winfield 275):

[image of HMS speedy goes here] Plans for HMS Speedy (NAN 94)
The data below are for HMS Vincejo (Lyon 253):
Armament: Upper Deck sixteen 18-pound carronades, Quarterdeck two 6-pound long guns

[image of vencejo goes here] Plans for HMS Vincejo (Gardiner 124-25)

HMS Polychrest

"She was known as the Carpenter's Mistake, and no one in the service had ever imagined she would be launched."

1803 - 1804: The Peace of Amiens and an anxious journey through France and Spain after hostilities resumed delay Jack's assignment in Post Captain to a new command until he is given the very unconventional ship-sloop HMS Polychrest, an unusual vessel with sharp ends at both bow and stern, no tumblehome (inward curvature at the top of the hull), drop keels (similar to daggerboards on some modern sail boats), and the remnants of the launching system for an unsuccessful secret weapon (a giant rocket). After several months of service in the English Channel, the Polychrest is severely damaged in a raid on a French port and sinks soon thereafter.

The physical form of the Polychrest (except for the secret weapon) was taken from the Dart class of sloops. The sliding keels, originally designed by Captain John Schank, were employed upon a number of small Royal Navy vessels around this period, although problems with leaking centerboard cases perhaps discouraged wider experimentation. Unlike the Polychrest with its extraordinary leeway and a propensity for missing stays, the real HMS Dart and her sister ship Arrow performed satisfactorily during their Royal Navy service. The Dart was broken up in 1809. The poor sailing qualities of Polychrest and perhaps the notion of a new secret weapon were likely taken from HMS Project, a much smaller vessel than the Dart (and Polychrest) with a very shallow draft to carry a new design of howitzer into coastal waters. The Project was broken up in 1810 after only five years of service.

The data below are for HMS Dart (Lyon 132):

Armament: Upper deck twenty-four 32-pound carronades, Quarterdeck four 32-pound carronades, Forecastle two 32-pound carronades
[image of HMS Dart] Plans for HMS Dart (Lyon 132) The data below are for HMS Project (Lyon156):

Armament: two howitzers-mortars [Image of Plans for HMS Project (Gardiner 75)] Plans for HMS Project (Gardiner 75)

HMS Lively

"No wonder they called her a crack frigate: her sailing qualities were quite out of the ordinary, and the smooth quiet discipline of her people was beyond anything he had seen."

1804 - 1805: Jack's success in raiding the French port, despite the loss of the Polychrest, bring him promotion in Post Captain to the rank of, naturally, post captain and the temporary command of the 38-gun frigate HMS Lively. With the Lively Jack takes part in the interception of a Spanish treasure squadron in the Atlantic. After participating in blockade operations in the western Mediterranean in HMS Surprise, Jack Aubrey relinquishes command of the frigate to her regular captain and returns home to England.

The Lively was a genuine Royal Navy ship. However, Patrick O'Brian did alter the ship's history for purposes of his fiction. In Post Captain the frigate is described as having served for a considerable period in the East Indies when in fact the Lively was launched and commissioned in 1804, the same year when Jack Aubrey takes command. The Lively was lost in a wreck near Valletta while escorting a convoy to Malta in 1810.

The data below are for HMS Lively (Winfield 166):

Armament: Upper Deck 28 18-pound long guns, Quarterdeck 8 9-pound long guns and 6 32-pound carronades, Forecastle 2 9-pound long guns and 2 32-pound carronades

[Image of HMS lively] Plans for HMS Lively (Lyon 122)