The Unknown Shore
From WikiPOBia
The Unknown Shore is the second of O’Brian’s novels based on Anson’s expedition of 1740; written at Collioure and published in 1959.
Page references are to the HarperCollins paperback edition.
Plot introduction
For more details about the plot, which will contain spoilers, see Summary for The Unknown Shore
Jack Byron and his unconventional friend Toby Barrow – a learned innocent with a passionate devotion to natural history - leave their Nottinghamshire home to join Commodore Anson’s projected expedition to the South Pacific. After some misadventures in London, they join the Wager, one of Anson’s support vessels, as midshipman and surgeon’s assistant respectively. Before them lie shipwreck, famine, desperate journeys around the barren coast of Chile and a slightly surreal period as prisoners of war.
Time July 1740-February 1745.