http://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&feed=atom&target=Oliver_MundyWikiPOBia - User contributions [en]2024-03-29T11:20:46ZFrom WikiPOBiaMediaWiki 1.15.1http://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Patrick_O%27BrianPatrick O'Brian2020-09-25T14:40:23Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* Love and war */ Further details of travels in 1937</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Himself2a.jpg|thumb|left|Patrick O'Brian]]<br />
'''Patrick O'Brian''', English novelist, short-story writer, translator and biographer, was born (as Richard Patrick Russ) at 'Walden', Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire, [[England]] on 12th December 1914 and died at The Fitzwilliam Hotel, [[Dublin]], [[Ireland]] on 2nd January 2000.<br />
<br />
==The life of Patrick O'Brian==<br />
<br />
'''Note''' ''While the author adopted the name of O'Brian only in August 1945 and was generally known as Patrick Russ until then, he will be referred to throughout this article, for convenience, as Patrick O'Brian or POB.''<br />
<br />
To see a complete listing of the works of Patrick O'Brian, please see the [[Complete works]] article.<br />
<br />
==='''Early years'''===<br />
<br />
Patrick O'Brian was the eighth child and youngest son of Charles and Jessie Russ; Charles was a physician with a particular interest in bacteriology and the treatment of venereal diseases. The boy's childhood was clouded by a series of misfortunes: he was subject to serious bouts of a bronchial disease, his mother died when he was three, his father's practice declined after the war, and during the 1920s the initially genial doctor changed in character, becoming morose and oppressive. In 1921 Dr. Russ banished all the children still at home, except Patrick, to boarding-schools or foster-parents. In December 1922 Dr. Russ took a second wife, Zoe Center, a widow (her husband had been a naval [[Lexicon:Surgeon|surgeon]]) with some property of her own. She took kindly to Patrick, who spent some time with her at a handsome old house near Worcester which she owned; its name, [[Melbury Lodge]], reappears in ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]''. Here the boy discovered a cache of 19th-century issues of the ''Gentleman's Magazine'' - his first encounter with the attitudes and idioms of a past era. In 1925, however, Dr. Russ was made bankrupt; Melbury Lodge was sold and Zoe and Patrick rejoined him in [[London]]. Patrick's meagre formal education now began with a year at Marylebone Grammar School; in the following year Mrs. Russ took him and his young sister Joan (his closest and almost his only companion in what was often a lonely and uneasy childhood) to Lewes, [[Sussex]], where he attended the local grammar-school for three years. An attempt in 1927 to gain entrance to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, came to nothing.<br />
<br />
While Patrick clearly enjoyed some aspects of the Lewes period (thinly-disguised references in ''[[Richard Temple]]'', and a few personal comments from later years, leave no doubt of this), we know nothing of his achievements at school. It is clear, however, that he had discovered the joy of language and creativity on his own account, for in about 1927 he began to write a book, ''[[Caesar]]''. Dr. Russ looked with unusual kindness on this endeavour and arranged for its publication in 1930; by this time he had the boy living with him as a kind of laboratory assistant. A short story, ''[[Skogula]]'', followed in 1931, and throughout the decade Patrick continued to produce stories (usually with animals as the central characters, like both those mentioned) for boys' periodicals and annuals. An anthology of these, ''[[Beasts Royal]]'', appeared in 1934. <br />
<br />
In the early 1930s Patrick studied languages and history in evening classes at Birkbeck College, London University. He was less successful in an attempt to enter the Royal Air Force as a pilot officer and was dismissed from his training course after a few weeks. At about this time Dr. Russ abandoned the remains of his practice and moved away from the capital. Soon afterwards Patrick returned to London and began life on his own account. A late poem, cited in Tolstoy's second volume (see ''References''), indicates that he visited Ireland in 1932 or 1933.<br />
<br />
==='''Love and war'''===<br />
<br />
Little is known for certain of Patrick's four years in London. He seems to have lived in a succession of lodgings and may have studied art for a while. In February 1936 he married Elizabeth Jones, an orphan from Wales; a son Richard was born in February 1937 and a daughter Jane, a sufferer from spina bifida, two years later. According to Nikolai Tolstoy (see ''References'' below), O'Brian may have visited Ireland in 1936 - he was undoubtedly in Dublin during 1937 - and it is probable that whatever direct knowledge of sailing he possessed also derives from this period. (Tolstoy proposes to identify the yacht-owning 'Cousin Edward' whom O'Brian mentions in his autobiographical sketch of 1994 as Edward Taaffe, a friend who was a witness at his wedding and whose name was used long afterwards in ''[[The Commodore (novel)|The Commodore]]''.) During 1937 O'Brian worked as a travel courier and visited Locarno in Italian Switzerland; Tolstoy also produces evidence that he visited New York before the war, possibly travelling there on board a large sailing-vessel, the barque ''Fantôme II''. At about the same time he began work on a study of the Bestiaries (medieval treatises in which facts and fancies about the animal world are treated allegorically from a Christian viewpoint); clearly he must have achieved some fluency in Latin by this time. 1938 saw the publication, by Oxford University Press, of his first adult novel, ''[[Hussein]]''. In the following year he fell ill, and on his recovery his brothers Godfrey and Victor rented a cottage in Suffolk for the family.<br />
<br />
Some time in 1938, O'Brian had met Mary Tolstoy (née Wicksteed), the beautiful and spirited English wife of a Russian nobleman. By the autumn of 1940 both of them were working as volunteer ambulance-drivers in blitz-torn London. Two years later, after Mary's divorce, they set up home together in an 18th-century house in Chelsea. In the previous year O'Brian had joined Political Warfare Executive (PWE), an organisation which developed propaganda and prepared material for agents working in occupied Europe, and here Mary also found employment. O'Brian's work included the drafting of topographical and cultural notes on various locations in [[France]] (including the region around [[Collioure]] where he was eventually to live), and these were well regarded by his superiors. Another event of 1942 was a visit from his brother Michael, who had long since emigrated to [[Australia]] and who was now a fighter pilot; O'Brian later identified Michael as in some measure a model for [[Jack Aubrey]]. In July 1945, divorced by Elizabeth, the author married Mary, and a few weeks later he formally changed his name to Patrick O'Brian; the unusual spelling of the surname seems to derive from that of a ship-owner in a Victorian insurance contract which he had transcribed from an unknown source. During this year O'Brian began to prepare an anthology drawn from 17th- and 18th-century books on travel and exploration - his first significant literary work since 1940; this finally reached the bookshops in 1947.<br />
<br />
===New beginnings===<br />
In October 1945, with their occupation at PWE gone, the O'Brians were confronted with the need to economise. They settled in a tiny cottage, Fron Wen, overlooking the valley of Cwm Croesor in Caernarvonshire, North Wales, where they lived a life of austere self-sufficiency. The Welsh period, which lasted for four years (the last eighteen months in a larger house), was a time of hardship, anxiety over the custody and education of Richard and, for the most part, creative paralysis; only a few stories emerged near the end of the period. Nonetheless, the Welsh episode gave O'Brian much: it deepened his knowledge of the natural world, sharpened his aptitude for self-support, enabled him to work as part of a team (he willingly shared in the labours of the sheep-farmers) while retaining his independence, and planted many a slow-growing but fruitful seed in his mind.<br />
<br />
The autumn of 1949 brought another great change. Believing (as he remarked) that poverty was easier to bear in a warm climate, O'Brian moved to Collioure, a largely [[Catalonia|Catalan]]-speaking seaside village near Perpignan in southern France. Here, apart from an episode in Cornwall in the autumn of 1954, the O'Brians would make their home for the rest of their life together – initially in the town and later in a house, ''Correch d'en Baus'', much enlarged and modified by O'Brian himself over the years. Books began to appear again: ''[[The Last Pool and Other Stories]]'' (a collection of stories written over the previous ten years or more) in 1950, ''[[Testimonies]]'' in 1952 and ''[[The Catalans A Novel]]'' in 1953. 1954 saw publication of ''[[The Road to Samarcand]]'', the novel-length successor to Sullivan/Ross stories he had published much earlier for the ''Oxford Annual for Boys'' while still writing under the name P.R. Russ. O'Brian was now beginning to gather critical approval on both sides of the Atlantic.<br />
<br />
In 1945 Mary had given her husband an early edition of Richard Walter's account of [[George Anson]]'s great voyage of the 1740s. From this grew ''[[The Golden Ocean]]'', the first of O'Brian's sea novels, written very quickly in 1953 and published to considerable acclaim in 1956. ''[[The Unknown Shore]]'' followed in 1959, but in the next novel, the partly autobiographical ''[[Richard Temple]]'' (1962), character once more took precedence over adventure. By now O'Brian was augmenting his still meagre earnings with a series of well-regarded translations from the French, which helped to make his name known in the United States.<br />
<br />
===Enter Aubrey and Maturin===<br />
[[C.S. Forester]], the doyen of nautical novelists and a much-loved figure on both sides of the Atlantic, had died in 1966. The American publishing house of Lippincott turned to O'Brian for a new work on the same theme, and the result was ''[[Master and Commander (novel)|Master and Commander]]'', published in 1969. The book won O'Brian many plaudits and some lasting friends, such as the novelist Mary Renault and Wolcott Gibbs and Richard Ollard from the publishing world. ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]'' and ''[[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]]'' soon followed; then came another short-story collection, ''[[The Chian Wine and Other Stories]]'', and the prestigious commission for the biography ''[[Pablo Picasso|Pablo Ruiz Picasso]]''. ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'' followed in 1976, and during that year O'Brian wrote down a quantity of plot-ideas which demonstrate that he was by now thinking in terms of an extended series of novels.<br />
<br />
There followed fifteen years of steady progress, with work on the Aubrey-Maturin novels interrupted only by the biography ''[[Joseph Banks A Life]]'' (1987). O'Brian's growing repute as a specialist in naval history brought him a number of commissions as a reviewer; the novels acquired significant new admirers, such as the novelists Iris Murdoch and A.S. Byatt and the actor Charlton Heston, and the artist [[Geoff Hunt]] painted the first of his cover designs for ''[[The Letter of Marque (novel)|The Letter of Marque]]'' (1987). On the other hand, the series was without a publisher in the United States for ten years, and O'Brian's works were still generally regarded as adventure-stories of a slightly superior kind rather than as literature. (Even in the mid-1990s two prestigious British reference works, ''The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'' and ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'', included demonstrably lesser writers whose spheres intersected with O'Brian's but found no place for O'Brian himself.) The O'Brians suffered some personal setbacks during this period: a serious car accident in 1977, a fire in their private vineyard in 1984. Despite this they gave generous financial support to Mary's son Nikolai, who had been ruined by a long and costly lawsuit.<br />
<br />
===The price of fame===<br />
In 1990, W. W. Norton began to issue the Aubrey-Maturin books in paperback, restoring them to the American market after a long hiatus. O'Brian had at last begun to achieve wider recognition; journalists began to seek him out - not always to his gratification or theirs, since he was an intensely private man. He was better pleased with such acknowledgments as election to the Royal Society of Literature in 1991 and the grand dinner held in his honour at the Royal Naval College, [[Greenwich]], in 1996. He and Mary visited the United States for the first time in 1993, and in the following year the British Library published a collection of appreciative essays (see ''References'' below). The attention of the media took an unpleasant turn in 1998, when a BBC television documentary presented an unfriendly view of O'Brian's personal history and a number of newspapers followed the scent. In March of the same year he lost Mary, 'the master and pilot of my bark' as he had described her in a Latin dedication; nonetheless he continued to work, completing two more novels and in 1999 beginning another, the unfinished ''[[21]]''. He moved to [[Dublin]], where he was made welcome at [[Trinity College, Dublin|Trinity College]], and spent much of that year there, returning to Collioure for the last time in the autumn before embarking on an strenuous publicity trip in the United States from which he had to return prematurely in late November. In Dublin once again, he resumed his writing, continuing until the last weeks – perhaps even, as Tolstoy believes, the last day – of his life. He died suddenly on 2 January 2000. He is [[Patrick O'Brian's Grave|entombed]] with his beloved Mary in [[Collioure]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
*'''King, Dean''' ''Patrick O'Brian: a life revealed''. New York: Henry Holt & Co. / London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2000.<br />
Unauthorised and fiercely resented by its subject, King's work is nonetheless a serious study embodying much information from Richard Russ, O'Brian's estranged son, and from acquaintances at Collioure and in the literary and publishing world. Its chief drawbacks (apart from some errors in chronology, inevitable given that King had no access to the personal records and recollections held by Nikolai Tolstoy) are a complete lack of references and a tendency to profess knowledge of O'Brian's private thoughts. Until the publication of Tolstoy's ssecond volume (October 2019) it was the only substantial source for O'Brian's life from 1950 onward.<br />
*'''O'Brian, Patrick''' 'Black, Choleric and Married', in Cunningham, A.E. (ed.) ''Patrick O'Brian: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography''. London, British Library, 1994.<br />
To be used with great caution and in close conjunction with Tolstoy (see below).<br />
*'''Tolstoy, Nikolai''' ''Patrick O'Brian: the making of the novelist''. London: Century Books, 2004.<br />
Tolstoy is the son of Mary O'Brian by her first marriage. From 1955 onwards he was probably closer to O'Brian than anybody else apart from Mary herself; besides his own invaluable memories, he holds O'Brian's library, critically important diaries and letters, and manuscripts of his published and unpublished literary works. This volume breaks off with the move to Collioure in the south of France. The second and final volume will cover the fifty remaining years of their lives at Collioure.<br />
*'''Tolstoy, Nikolai''' ''Patrick O'Brian: a very private life''. London: William Collins, 2019.<br />
The long-awaited sequel to the above, with much new information on personal life and family relationships as well as sources for names and motifs in the later works. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Publishing]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Patrick_O%27BrianPatrick O'Brian2020-09-25T14:28:00Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* Early years */ First visit to Ireland</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Himself2a.jpg|thumb|left|Patrick O'Brian]]<br />
'''Patrick O'Brian''', English novelist, short-story writer, translator and biographer, was born (as Richard Patrick Russ) at 'Walden', Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire, [[England]] on 12th December 1914 and died at The Fitzwilliam Hotel, [[Dublin]], [[Ireland]] on 2nd January 2000.<br />
<br />
==The life of Patrick O'Brian==<br />
<br />
'''Note''' ''While the author adopted the name of O'Brian only in August 1945 and was generally known as Patrick Russ until then, he will be referred to throughout this article, for convenience, as Patrick O'Brian or POB.''<br />
<br />
To see a complete listing of the works of Patrick O'Brian, please see the [[Complete works]] article.<br />
<br />
==='''Early years'''===<br />
<br />
Patrick O'Brian was the eighth child and youngest son of Charles and Jessie Russ; Charles was a physician with a particular interest in bacteriology and the treatment of venereal diseases. The boy's childhood was clouded by a series of misfortunes: he was subject to serious bouts of a bronchial disease, his mother died when he was three, his father's practice declined after the war, and during the 1920s the initially genial doctor changed in character, becoming morose and oppressive. In 1921 Dr. Russ banished all the children still at home, except Patrick, to boarding-schools or foster-parents. In December 1922 Dr. Russ took a second wife, Zoe Center, a widow (her husband had been a naval [[Lexicon:Surgeon|surgeon]]) with some property of her own. She took kindly to Patrick, who spent some time with her at a handsome old house near Worcester which she owned; its name, [[Melbury Lodge]], reappears in ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]''. Here the boy discovered a cache of 19th-century issues of the ''Gentleman's Magazine'' - his first encounter with the attitudes and idioms of a past era. In 1925, however, Dr. Russ was made bankrupt; Melbury Lodge was sold and Zoe and Patrick rejoined him in [[London]]. Patrick's meagre formal education now began with a year at Marylebone Grammar School; in the following year Mrs. Russ took him and his young sister Joan (his closest and almost his only companion in what was often a lonely and uneasy childhood) to Lewes, [[Sussex]], where he attended the local grammar-school for three years. An attempt in 1927 to gain entrance to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, came to nothing.<br />
<br />
While Patrick clearly enjoyed some aspects of the Lewes period (thinly-disguised references in ''[[Richard Temple]]'', and a few personal comments from later years, leave no doubt of this), we know nothing of his achievements at school. It is clear, however, that he had discovered the joy of language and creativity on his own account, for in about 1927 he began to write a book, ''[[Caesar]]''. Dr. Russ looked with unusual kindness on this endeavour and arranged for its publication in 1930; by this time he had the boy living with him as a kind of laboratory assistant. A short story, ''[[Skogula]]'', followed in 1931, and throughout the decade Patrick continued to produce stories (usually with animals as the central characters, like both those mentioned) for boys' periodicals and annuals. An anthology of these, ''[[Beasts Royal]]'', appeared in 1934. <br />
<br />
In the early 1930s Patrick studied languages and history in evening classes at Birkbeck College, London University. He was less successful in an attempt to enter the Royal Air Force as a pilot officer and was dismissed from his training course after a few weeks. At about this time Dr. Russ abandoned the remains of his practice and moved away from the capital. Soon afterwards Patrick returned to London and began life on his own account. A late poem, cited in Tolstoy's second volume (see ''References''), indicates that he visited Ireland in 1932 or 1933.<br />
<br />
==='''Love and war'''===<br />
<br />
Little is known for certain of Patrick's four years in London. He seems to have lived in a succession of lodgings and may have studied art for a while. In February 1936 he married Elizabeth Jones, an orphan from Wales; a son Richard was born in February 1937 and a daughter Jane, a sufferer from spina bifida, two years later. According to Nikolai Tolstoy (see ''References'' below), O'Brian may have visited Ireland in 1936 - he was undoubtedly in Dublin during 1937 - and it is probable that whatever direct knowledge of sailing he possessed also derives from this period. (Tolstoy proposes to identify the yacht-owning 'Cousin Edward' whom O'Brian mentions in his autobiographical sketch of 1994 as Edward Taaffe, a friend who was a witness at his wedding and whose name was used long afterwards in ''[[The Commodore (novel)|The Commodore]]''.) During 1937 O'Brian worked as a travel courier and visited Locarno in Italian Switzerland; Tolstoy also thinks it possible that he visited New York before the war. At about the same time he began work on a study of the Bestiaries (medieval treatises in which facts and fancies about the animal world are treated allegorically from a Christian viewpoint); clearly he must have achieved some fluency in Latin by this time. 1938 saw the publication, by Oxford University Press, of his first adult novel, ''[[Hussein]]''. In the following year he fell ill, and on his recovery his brothers Godfrey and Victor rented a cottage in Suffolk for the family.<br />
<br />
Some time in 1938, O'Brian had met Mary Tolstoy (née Wicksteed), the beautiful and spirited English wife of a Russian nobleman. By the autumn of 1940 both of them were working as volunteer ambulance-drivers in blitz-torn London. Two years later, after Mary's divorce, they set up home together in an 18th-century house in Chelsea. In the previous year O'Brian had joined Political Warfare Executive (PWE), an organisation which developed propaganda and prepared material for agents working in occupied Europe, and here Mary also found employment. O'Brian's work included the drafting of topographical and cultural notes on various locations in [[France]] (including the region around [[Collioure]] where he was eventually to live), and these were well regarded by his superiors. Another event of 1942 was a visit from his brother Michael, who had long since emigrated to [[Australia]] and who was now a fighter pilot; O'Brian later identified Michael as in some measure a model for [[Jack Aubrey]]. In July 1945, divorced by Elizabeth, the author married Mary, and a few weeks later he formally changed his name to Patrick O'Brian; the unusual spelling of the surname seems to derive from that of a ship-owner in a Victorian insurance contract which he had transcribed from an unknown source. During this year O'Brian began to prepare an anthology drawn from 17th- and 18th-century books on travel and exploration - his first significant literary work since 1940; this finally reached the bookshops in 1947.<br />
<br />
===New beginnings===<br />
In October 1945, with their occupation at PWE gone, the O'Brians were confronted with the need to economise. They settled in a tiny cottage, Fron Wen, overlooking the valley of Cwm Croesor in Caernarvonshire, North Wales, where they lived a life of austere self-sufficiency. The Welsh period, which lasted for four years (the last eighteen months in a larger house), was a time of hardship, anxiety over the custody and education of Richard and, for the most part, creative paralysis; only a few stories emerged near the end of the period. Nonetheless, the Welsh episode gave O'Brian much: it deepened his knowledge of the natural world, sharpened his aptitude for self-support, enabled him to work as part of a team (he willingly shared in the labours of the sheep-farmers) while retaining his independence, and planted many a slow-growing but fruitful seed in his mind.<br />
<br />
The autumn of 1949 brought another great change. Believing (as he remarked) that poverty was easier to bear in a warm climate, O'Brian moved to Collioure, a largely [[Catalonia|Catalan]]-speaking seaside village near Perpignan in southern France. Here, apart from an episode in Cornwall in the autumn of 1954, the O'Brians would make their home for the rest of their life together – initially in the town and later in a house, ''Correch d'en Baus'', much enlarged and modified by O'Brian himself over the years. Books began to appear again: ''[[The Last Pool and Other Stories]]'' (a collection of stories written over the previous ten years or more) in 1950, ''[[Testimonies]]'' in 1952 and ''[[The Catalans A Novel]]'' in 1953. 1954 saw publication of ''[[The Road to Samarcand]]'', the novel-length successor to Sullivan/Ross stories he had published much earlier for the ''Oxford Annual for Boys'' while still writing under the name P.R. Russ. O'Brian was now beginning to gather critical approval on both sides of the Atlantic.<br />
<br />
In 1945 Mary had given her husband an early edition of Richard Walter's account of [[George Anson]]'s great voyage of the 1740s. From this grew ''[[The Golden Ocean]]'', the first of O'Brian's sea novels, written very quickly in 1953 and published to considerable acclaim in 1956. ''[[The Unknown Shore]]'' followed in 1959, but in the next novel, the partly autobiographical ''[[Richard Temple]]'' (1962), character once more took precedence over adventure. By now O'Brian was augmenting his still meagre earnings with a series of well-regarded translations from the French, which helped to make his name known in the United States.<br />
<br />
===Enter Aubrey and Maturin===<br />
[[C.S. Forester]], the doyen of nautical novelists and a much-loved figure on both sides of the Atlantic, had died in 1966. The American publishing house of Lippincott turned to O'Brian for a new work on the same theme, and the result was ''[[Master and Commander (novel)|Master and Commander]]'', published in 1969. The book won O'Brian many plaudits and some lasting friends, such as the novelist Mary Renault and Wolcott Gibbs and Richard Ollard from the publishing world. ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]'' and ''[[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]]'' soon followed; then came another short-story collection, ''[[The Chian Wine and Other Stories]]'', and the prestigious commission for the biography ''[[Pablo Picasso|Pablo Ruiz Picasso]]''. ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'' followed in 1976, and during that year O'Brian wrote down a quantity of plot-ideas which demonstrate that he was by now thinking in terms of an extended series of novels.<br />
<br />
There followed fifteen years of steady progress, with work on the Aubrey-Maturin novels interrupted only by the biography ''[[Joseph Banks A Life]]'' (1987). O'Brian's growing repute as a specialist in naval history brought him a number of commissions as a reviewer; the novels acquired significant new admirers, such as the novelists Iris Murdoch and A.S. Byatt and the actor Charlton Heston, and the artist [[Geoff Hunt]] painted the first of his cover designs for ''[[The Letter of Marque (novel)|The Letter of Marque]]'' (1987). On the other hand, the series was without a publisher in the United States for ten years, and O'Brian's works were still generally regarded as adventure-stories of a slightly superior kind rather than as literature. (Even in the mid-1990s two prestigious British reference works, ''The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'' and ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'', included demonstrably lesser writers whose spheres intersected with O'Brian's but found no place for O'Brian himself.) The O'Brians suffered some personal setbacks during this period: a serious car accident in 1977, a fire in their private vineyard in 1984. Despite this they gave generous financial support to Mary's son Nikolai, who had been ruined by a long and costly lawsuit.<br />
<br />
===The price of fame===<br />
In 1990, W. W. Norton began to issue the Aubrey-Maturin books in paperback, restoring them to the American market after a long hiatus. O'Brian had at last begun to achieve wider recognition; journalists began to seek him out - not always to his gratification or theirs, since he was an intensely private man. He was better pleased with such acknowledgments as election to the Royal Society of Literature in 1991 and the grand dinner held in his honour at the Royal Naval College, [[Greenwich]], in 1996. He and Mary visited the United States for the first time in 1993, and in the following year the British Library published a collection of appreciative essays (see ''References'' below). The attention of the media took an unpleasant turn in 1998, when a BBC television documentary presented an unfriendly view of O'Brian's personal history and a number of newspapers followed the scent. In March of the same year he lost Mary, 'the master and pilot of my bark' as he had described her in a Latin dedication; nonetheless he continued to work, completing two more novels and in 1999 beginning another, the unfinished ''[[21]]''. He moved to [[Dublin]], where he was made welcome at [[Trinity College, Dublin|Trinity College]], and spent much of that year there, returning to Collioure for the last time in the autumn before embarking on an strenuous publicity trip in the United States from which he had to return prematurely in late November. In Dublin once again, he resumed his writing, continuing until the last weeks – perhaps even, as Tolstoy believes, the last day – of his life. He died suddenly on 2 January 2000. He is [[Patrick O'Brian's Grave|entombed]] with his beloved Mary in [[Collioure]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
*'''King, Dean''' ''Patrick O'Brian: a life revealed''. New York: Henry Holt & Co. / London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2000.<br />
Unauthorised and fiercely resented by its subject, King's work is nonetheless a serious study embodying much information from Richard Russ, O'Brian's estranged son, and from acquaintances at Collioure and in the literary and publishing world. Its chief drawbacks (apart from some errors in chronology, inevitable given that King had no access to the personal records and recollections held by Nikolai Tolstoy) are a complete lack of references and a tendency to profess knowledge of O'Brian's private thoughts. Until the publication of Tolstoy's ssecond volume (October 2019) it was the only substantial source for O'Brian's life from 1950 onward.<br />
*'''O'Brian, Patrick''' 'Black, Choleric and Married', in Cunningham, A.E. (ed.) ''Patrick O'Brian: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography''. London, British Library, 1994.<br />
To be used with great caution and in close conjunction with Tolstoy (see below).<br />
*'''Tolstoy, Nikolai''' ''Patrick O'Brian: the making of the novelist''. London: Century Books, 2004.<br />
Tolstoy is the son of Mary O'Brian by her first marriage. From 1955 onwards he was probably closer to O'Brian than anybody else apart from Mary herself; besides his own invaluable memories, he holds O'Brian's library, critically important diaries and letters, and manuscripts of his published and unpublished literary works. This volume breaks off with the move to Collioure in the south of France. The second and final volume will cover the fifty remaining years of their lives at Collioure.<br />
*'''Tolstoy, Nikolai''' ''Patrick O'Brian: a very private life''. London: William Collins, 2019.<br />
The long-awaited sequel to the above, with much new information on personal life and family relationships as well as sources for names and motifs in the later works. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Publishing]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Patrick_O%27BrianPatrick O'Brian2020-09-25T14:23:11Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* The price of fame */ Details of last two years of life</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Himself2a.jpg|thumb|left|Patrick O'Brian]]<br />
'''Patrick O'Brian''', English novelist, short-story writer, translator and biographer, was born (as Richard Patrick Russ) at 'Walden', Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire, [[England]] on 12th December 1914 and died at The Fitzwilliam Hotel, [[Dublin]], [[Ireland]] on 2nd January 2000.<br />
<br />
==The life of Patrick O'Brian==<br />
<br />
'''Note''' ''While the author adopted the name of O'Brian only in August 1945 and was generally known as Patrick Russ until then, he will be referred to throughout this article, for convenience, as Patrick O'Brian or POB.''<br />
<br />
To see a complete listing of the works of Patrick O'Brian, please see the [[Complete works]] article.<br />
<br />
==='''Early years'''===<br />
<br />
Patrick O'Brian was the eighth child and youngest son of Charles and Jessie Russ; Charles was a physician with a particular interest in bacteriology and the treatment of venereal diseases. The boy's childhood was clouded by a series of misfortunes: he was subject to serious bouts of a bronchial disease, his mother died when he was three, his father's practice declined after the war, and during the 1920s the initially genial doctor changed in character, becoming morose and oppressive. In 1921 Dr. Russ banished all the children still at home, except Patrick, to boarding-schools or foster-parents. In December 1922 Dr. Russ took a second wife, Zoe Center, a widow (her husband had been a naval [[Lexicon:Surgeon|surgeon]]) with some property of her own. She took kindly to Patrick, who spent some time with her at a handsome old house near Worcester which she owned; its name, [[Melbury Lodge]], reappears in ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]''. Here the boy discovered a cache of 19th-century issues of the ''Gentleman's Magazine'' - his first encounter with the attitudes and idioms of a past era. In 1925, however, Dr. Russ was made bankrupt; Melbury Lodge was sold and Zoe and Patrick rejoined him in [[London]]. Patrick's meagre formal education now began with a year at Marylebone Grammar School; in the following year Mrs. Russ took him and his young sister Joan (his closest and almost his only companion in what was often a lonely and uneasy childhood) to Lewes, [[Sussex]], where he attended the local grammar-school for three years. An attempt in 1927 to gain entrance to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, came to nothing.<br />
<br />
While Patrick clearly enjoyed some aspects of the Lewes period (thinly-disguised references in ''[[Richard Temple]]'', and a few personal comments from later years, leave no doubt of this), we know nothing of his achievements at school. It is clear, however, that he had discovered the joy of language and creativity on his own account, for in about 1927 he began to write a book, ''[[Caesar]]''. Dr. Russ looked with unusual kindness on this endeavour and arranged for its publication in 1930; by this time he had the boy living with him as a kind of laboratory assistant. A short story, ''[[Skogula]]'', followed in 1931, and throughout the decade Patrick continued to produce stories (usually with animals as the central characters, like both those mentioned) for boys' periodicals and annuals. An anthology of these, ''[[Beasts Royal]]'', appeared in 1934. <br />
<br />
In the early 1930s Patrick studied languages and history in evening classes at Birkbeck College, London University. He was less successful in an attempt to enter the Royal Air Force as a pilot officer and was dismissed from his training course after a few weeks. At about this time Dr. Russ abandoned the remains of his practice and moved away from the capital. Soon afterwards Patrick returned to London and began life on his own account.<br />
<br />
==='''Love and war'''===<br />
<br />
Little is known for certain of Patrick's four years in London. He seems to have lived in a succession of lodgings and may have studied art for a while. In February 1936 he married Elizabeth Jones, an orphan from Wales; a son Richard was born in February 1937 and a daughter Jane, a sufferer from spina bifida, two years later. According to Nikolai Tolstoy (see ''References'' below), O'Brian may have visited Ireland in 1936 - he was undoubtedly in Dublin during 1937 - and it is probable that whatever direct knowledge of sailing he possessed also derives from this period. (Tolstoy proposes to identify the yacht-owning 'Cousin Edward' whom O'Brian mentions in his autobiographical sketch of 1994 as Edward Taaffe, a friend who was a witness at his wedding and whose name was used long afterwards in ''[[The Commodore (novel)|The Commodore]]''.) During 1937 O'Brian worked as a travel courier and visited Locarno in Italian Switzerland; Tolstoy also thinks it possible that he visited New York before the war. At about the same time he began work on a study of the Bestiaries (medieval treatises in which facts and fancies about the animal world are treated allegorically from a Christian viewpoint); clearly he must have achieved some fluency in Latin by this time. 1938 saw the publication, by Oxford University Press, of his first adult novel, ''[[Hussein]]''. In the following year he fell ill, and on his recovery his brothers Godfrey and Victor rented a cottage in Suffolk for the family.<br />
<br />
Some time in 1938, O'Brian had met Mary Tolstoy (née Wicksteed), the beautiful and spirited English wife of a Russian nobleman. By the autumn of 1940 both of them were working as volunteer ambulance-drivers in blitz-torn London. Two years later, after Mary's divorce, they set up home together in an 18th-century house in Chelsea. In the previous year O'Brian had joined Political Warfare Executive (PWE), an organisation which developed propaganda and prepared material for agents working in occupied Europe, and here Mary also found employment. O'Brian's work included the drafting of topographical and cultural notes on various locations in [[France]] (including the region around [[Collioure]] where he was eventually to live), and these were well regarded by his superiors. Another event of 1942 was a visit from his brother Michael, who had long since emigrated to [[Australia]] and who was now a fighter pilot; O'Brian later identified Michael as in some measure a model for [[Jack Aubrey]]. In July 1945, divorced by Elizabeth, the author married Mary, and a few weeks later he formally changed his name to Patrick O'Brian; the unusual spelling of the surname seems to derive from that of a ship-owner in a Victorian insurance contract which he had transcribed from an unknown source. During this year O'Brian began to prepare an anthology drawn from 17th- and 18th-century books on travel and exploration - his first significant literary work since 1940; this finally reached the bookshops in 1947.<br />
<br />
===New beginnings===<br />
In October 1945, with their occupation at PWE gone, the O'Brians were confronted with the need to economise. They settled in a tiny cottage, Fron Wen, overlooking the valley of Cwm Croesor in Caernarvonshire, North Wales, where they lived a life of austere self-sufficiency. The Welsh period, which lasted for four years (the last eighteen months in a larger house), was a time of hardship, anxiety over the custody and education of Richard and, for the most part, creative paralysis; only a few stories emerged near the end of the period. Nonetheless, the Welsh episode gave O'Brian much: it deepened his knowledge of the natural world, sharpened his aptitude for self-support, enabled him to work as part of a team (he willingly shared in the labours of the sheep-farmers) while retaining his independence, and planted many a slow-growing but fruitful seed in his mind.<br />
<br />
The autumn of 1949 brought another great change. Believing (as he remarked) that poverty was easier to bear in a warm climate, O'Brian moved to Collioure, a largely [[Catalonia|Catalan]]-speaking seaside village near Perpignan in southern France. Here, apart from an episode in Cornwall in the autumn of 1954, the O'Brians would make their home for the rest of their life together – initially in the town and later in a house, ''Correch d'en Baus'', much enlarged and modified by O'Brian himself over the years. Books began to appear again: ''[[The Last Pool and Other Stories]]'' (a collection of stories written over the previous ten years or more) in 1950, ''[[Testimonies]]'' in 1952 and ''[[The Catalans A Novel]]'' in 1953. 1954 saw publication of ''[[The Road to Samarcand]]'', the novel-length successor to Sullivan/Ross stories he had published much earlier for the ''Oxford Annual for Boys'' while still writing under the name P.R. Russ. O'Brian was now beginning to gather critical approval on both sides of the Atlantic.<br />
<br />
In 1945 Mary had given her husband an early edition of Richard Walter's account of [[George Anson]]'s great voyage of the 1740s. From this grew ''[[The Golden Ocean]]'', the first of O'Brian's sea novels, written very quickly in 1953 and published to considerable acclaim in 1956. ''[[The Unknown Shore]]'' followed in 1959, but in the next novel, the partly autobiographical ''[[Richard Temple]]'' (1962), character once more took precedence over adventure. By now O'Brian was augmenting his still meagre earnings with a series of well-regarded translations from the French, which helped to make his name known in the United States.<br />
<br />
===Enter Aubrey and Maturin===<br />
[[C.S. Forester]], the doyen of nautical novelists and a much-loved figure on both sides of the Atlantic, had died in 1966. The American publishing house of Lippincott turned to O'Brian for a new work on the same theme, and the result was ''[[Master and Commander (novel)|Master and Commander]]'', published in 1969. The book won O'Brian many plaudits and some lasting friends, such as the novelist Mary Renault and Wolcott Gibbs and Richard Ollard from the publishing world. ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]'' and ''[[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]]'' soon followed; then came another short-story collection, ''[[The Chian Wine and Other Stories]]'', and the prestigious commission for the biography ''[[Pablo Picasso|Pablo Ruiz Picasso]]''. ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'' followed in 1976, and during that year O'Brian wrote down a quantity of plot-ideas which demonstrate that he was by now thinking in terms of an extended series of novels.<br />
<br />
There followed fifteen years of steady progress, with work on the Aubrey-Maturin novels interrupted only by the biography ''[[Joseph Banks A Life]]'' (1987). O'Brian's growing repute as a specialist in naval history brought him a number of commissions as a reviewer; the novels acquired significant new admirers, such as the novelists Iris Murdoch and A.S. Byatt and the actor Charlton Heston, and the artist [[Geoff Hunt]] painted the first of his cover designs for ''[[The Letter of Marque (novel)|The Letter of Marque]]'' (1987). On the other hand, the series was without a publisher in the United States for ten years, and O'Brian's works were still generally regarded as adventure-stories of a slightly superior kind rather than as literature. (Even in the mid-1990s two prestigious British reference works, ''The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'' and ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'', included demonstrably lesser writers whose spheres intersected with O'Brian's but found no place for O'Brian himself.) The O'Brians suffered some personal setbacks during this period: a serious car accident in 1977, a fire in their private vineyard in 1984. Despite this they gave generous financial support to Mary's son Nikolai, who had been ruined by a long and costly lawsuit.<br />
<br />
===The price of fame===<br />
In 1990, W. W. Norton began to issue the Aubrey-Maturin books in paperback, restoring them to the American market after a long hiatus. O'Brian had at last begun to achieve wider recognition; journalists began to seek him out - not always to his gratification or theirs, since he was an intensely private man. He was better pleased with such acknowledgments as election to the Royal Society of Literature in 1991 and the grand dinner held in his honour at the Royal Naval College, [[Greenwich]], in 1996. He and Mary visited the United States for the first time in 1993, and in the following year the British Library published a collection of appreciative essays (see ''References'' below). The attention of the media took an unpleasant turn in 1998, when a BBC television documentary presented an unfriendly view of O'Brian's personal history and a number of newspapers followed the scent. In March of the same year he lost Mary, 'the master and pilot of my bark' as he had described her in a Latin dedication; nonetheless he continued to work, completing two more novels and in 1999 beginning another, the unfinished ''[[21]]''. He moved to [[Dublin]], where he was made welcome at [[Trinity College, Dublin|Trinity College]], and spent much of that year there, returning to Collioure for the last time in the autumn before embarking on an strenuous publicity trip in the United States from which he had to return prematurely in late November. In Dublin once again, he resumed his writing, continuing until the last weeks – perhaps even, as Tolstoy believes, the last day – of his life. He died suddenly on 2 January 2000. He is [[Patrick O'Brian's Grave|entombed]] with his beloved Mary in [[Collioure]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
*'''King, Dean''' ''Patrick O'Brian: a life revealed''. New York: Henry Holt & Co. / London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2000.<br />
Unauthorised and fiercely resented by its subject, King's work is nonetheless a serious study embodying much information from Richard Russ, O'Brian's estranged son, and from acquaintances at Collioure and in the literary and publishing world. Its chief drawbacks (apart from some errors in chronology, inevitable given that King had no access to the personal records and recollections held by Nikolai Tolstoy) are a complete lack of references and a tendency to profess knowledge of O'Brian's private thoughts. Until the publication of Tolstoy's ssecond volume (October 2019) it was the only substantial source for O'Brian's life from 1950 onward.<br />
*'''O'Brian, Patrick''' 'Black, Choleric and Married', in Cunningham, A.E. (ed.) ''Patrick O'Brian: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography''. London, British Library, 1994.<br />
To be used with great caution and in close conjunction with Tolstoy (see below).<br />
*'''Tolstoy, Nikolai''' ''Patrick O'Brian: the making of the novelist''. London: Century Books, 2004.<br />
Tolstoy is the son of Mary O'Brian by her first marriage. From 1955 onwards he was probably closer to O'Brian than anybody else apart from Mary herself; besides his own invaluable memories, he holds O'Brian's library, critically important diaries and letters, and manuscripts of his published and unpublished literary works. This volume breaks off with the move to Collioure in the south of France. The second and final volume will cover the fifty remaining years of their lives at Collioure.<br />
*'''Tolstoy, Nikolai''' ''Patrick O'Brian: a very private life''. London: William Collins, 2019.<br />
The long-awaited sequel to the above, with much new information on personal life and family relationships as well as sources for names and motifs in the later works. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Publishing]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Patrick_O%27BrianPatrick O'Brian2020-01-16T17:15:00Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* Love and war */ POB's possible visit to USA in late 1930s</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Himself2a.jpg|thumb|left|Patrick O'Brian]]<br />
'''Patrick O'Brian''', English novelist, short-story writer, translator and biographer, was born (as Richard Patrick Russ) at 'Walden', Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire, [[England]] on 12th December 1914 and died at The Fitzwilliam Hotel, [[Dublin]], [[Ireland]] on 2nd January 2000.<br />
<br />
==The life of Patrick O'Brian==<br />
<br />
'''Note''' ''While the author adopted the name of O'Brian only in August 1945 and was generally known as Patrick Russ until then, he will be referred to throughout this article, for convenience, as Patrick O'Brian or POB.''<br />
<br />
To see a complete listing of the works of Patrick O'Brian, please see the [[Complete works]] article.<br />
<br />
==='''Early years'''===<br />
<br />
Patrick O'Brian was the eighth child and youngest son of Charles and Jessie Russ; Charles was a physician with a particular interest in bacteriology and the treatment of venereal diseases. The boy's childhood was clouded by a series of misfortunes: he was subject to serious bouts of a bronchial disease, his mother died when he was three, his father's practice declined after the war, and during the 1920s the initially genial doctor changed in character, becoming morose and oppressive. In 1921 Dr. Russ banished all the children still at home, except Patrick, to boarding-schools or foster-parents. In December 1922 Dr. Russ took a second wife, Zoe Center, a widow (her husband had been a naval [[Lexicon:Surgeon|surgeon]]) with some property of her own. She took kindly to Patrick, who spent some time with her at a handsome old house near Worcester which she owned; its name, [[Melbury Lodge]], reappears in ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]''. Here the boy discovered a cache of 19th-century issues of the ''Gentleman's Magazine'' - his first encounter with the attitudes and idioms of a past era. In 1925, however, Dr. Russ was made bankrupt; Melbury Lodge was sold and Zoe and Patrick rejoined him in [[London]]. Patrick's meagre formal education now began with a year at Marylebone Grammar School; in the following year Mrs. Russ took him and his young sister Joan (his closest and almost his only companion in what was often a lonely and uneasy childhood) to Lewes, [[Sussex]], where he attended the local grammar-school for three years. An attempt in 1927 to gain entrance to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, came to nothing.<br />
<br />
While Patrick clearly enjoyed some aspects of the Lewes period (thinly-disguised references in ''[[Richard Temple]]'', and a few personal comments from later years, leave no doubt of this), we know nothing of his achievements at school. It is clear, however, that he had discovered the joy of language and creativity on his own account, for in about 1927 he began to write a book, ''[[Caesar]]''. Dr. Russ looked with unusual kindness on this endeavour and arranged for its publication in 1930; by this time he had the boy living with him as a kind of laboratory assistant. A short story, ''[[Skogula]]'', followed in 1931, and throughout the decade Patrick continued to produce stories (usually with animals as the central characters, like both those mentioned) for boys' periodicals and annuals. An anthology of these, ''[[Beasts Royal]]'', appeared in 1934. <br />
<br />
In the early 1930s Patrick studied languages and history in evening classes at Birkbeck College, London University. He was less successful in an attempt to enter the Royal Air Force as a pilot officer and was dismissed from his training course after a few weeks. At about this time Dr. Russ abandoned the remains of his practice and moved away from the capital. Soon afterwards Patrick returned to London and began life on his own account.<br />
<br />
==='''Love and war'''===<br />
<br />
Little is known for certain of Patrick's four years in London. He seems to have lived in a succession of lodgings and may have studied art for a while. In February 1936 he married Elizabeth Jones, an orphan from Wales; a son Richard was born in February 1937 and a daughter Jane, a sufferer from spina bifida, two years later. According to Nikolai Tolstoy (see ''References'' below), O'Brian may have visited Ireland in 1936 - he was undoubtedly in Dublin during 1937 - and it is probable that whatever direct knowledge of sailing he possessed also derives from this period. (Tolstoy proposes to identify the yacht-owning 'Cousin Edward' whom O'Brian mentions in his autobiographical sketch of 1994 as Edward Taaffe, a friend who was a witness at his wedding and whose name was used long afterwards in ''[[The Commodore (novel)|The Commodore]]''.) During 1937 O'Brian worked as a travel courier and visited Locarno in Italian Switzerland; Tolstoy also thinks it possible that he visited New York before the war. At about the same time he began work on a study of the Bestiaries (medieval treatises in which facts and fancies about the animal world are treated allegorically from a Christian viewpoint); clearly he must have achieved some fluency in Latin by this time. 1938 saw the publication, by Oxford University Press, of his first adult novel, ''[[Hussein]]''. In the following year he fell ill, and on his recovery his brothers Godfrey and Victor rented a cottage in Suffolk for the family.<br />
<br />
Some time in 1938, O'Brian had met Mary Tolstoy (née Wicksteed), the beautiful and spirited English wife of a Russian nobleman. By the autumn of 1940 both of them were working as volunteer ambulance-drivers in blitz-torn London. Two years later, after Mary's divorce, they set up home together in an 18th-century house in Chelsea. In the previous year O'Brian had joined Political Warfare Executive (PWE), an organisation which developed propaganda and prepared material for agents working in occupied Europe, and here Mary also found employment. O'Brian's work included the drafting of topographical and cultural notes on various locations in [[France]] (including the region around [[Collioure]] where he was eventually to live), and these were well regarded by his superiors. Another event of 1942 was a visit from his brother Michael, who had long since emigrated to [[Australia]] and who was now a fighter pilot; O'Brian later identified Michael as in some measure a model for [[Jack Aubrey]]. In July 1945, divorced by Elizabeth, the author married Mary, and a few weeks later he formally changed his name to Patrick O'Brian; the unusual spelling of the surname seems to derive from that of a ship-owner in a Victorian insurance contract which he had transcribed from an unknown source. During this year O'Brian began to prepare an anthology drawn from 17th- and 18th-century books on travel and exploration - his first significant literary work since 1940; this finally reached the bookshops in 1947.<br />
<br />
===New beginnings===<br />
In October 1945, with their occupation at PWE gone, the O'Brians were confronted with the need to economise. They settled in a tiny cottage, Fron Wen, overlooking the valley of Cwm Croesor in Caernarvonshire, North Wales, where they lived a life of austere self-sufficiency. The Welsh period, which lasted for four years (the last eighteen months in a larger house), was a time of hardship, anxiety over the custody and education of Richard and, for the most part, creative paralysis; only a few stories emerged near the end of the period. Nonetheless, the Welsh episode gave O'Brian much: it deepened his knowledge of the natural world, sharpened his aptitude for self-support, enabled him to work as part of a team (he willingly shared in the labours of the sheep-farmers) while retaining his independence, and planted many a slow-growing but fruitful seed in his mind.<br />
<br />
The autumn of 1949 brought another great change. Believing (as he remarked) that poverty was easier to bear in a warm climate, O'Brian moved to Collioure, a largely [[Catalonia|Catalan]]-speaking seaside village near Perpignan in southern France. Here, apart from an episode in Cornwall in the autumn of 1954, the O'Brians would make their home for the rest of their life together – initially in the town and later in a house, ''Correch d'en Baus'', much enlarged and modified by O'Brian himself over the years. Books began to appear again: ''[[The Last Pool and Other Stories]]'' (a collection of stories written over the previous ten years or more) in 1950, ''[[Testimonies]]'' in 1952 and ''[[The Catalans A Novel]]'' in 1953. 1954 saw publication of ''[[The Road to Samarcand]]'', the novel-length successor to Sullivan/Ross stories he had published much earlier for the ''Oxford Annual for Boys'' while still writing under the name P.R. Russ. O'Brian was now beginning to gather critical approval on both sides of the Atlantic.<br />
<br />
In 1945 Mary had given her husband an early edition of Richard Walter's account of [[George Anson]]'s great voyage of the 1740s. From this grew ''[[The Golden Ocean]]'', the first of O'Brian's sea novels, written very quickly in 1953 and published to considerable acclaim in 1956. ''[[The Unknown Shore]]'' followed in 1959, but in the next novel, the partly autobiographical ''[[Richard Temple]]'' (1962), character once more took precedence over adventure. By now O'Brian was augmenting his still meagre earnings with a series of well-regarded translations from the French, which helped to make his name known in the United States.<br />
<br />
===Enter Aubrey and Maturin===<br />
[[C.S. Forester]], the doyen of nautical novelists and a much-loved figure on both sides of the Atlantic, had died in 1966. The American publishing house of Lippincott turned to O'Brian for a new work on the same theme, and the result was ''[[Master and Commander (novel)|Master and Commander]]'', published in 1969. The book won O'Brian many plaudits and some lasting friends, such as the novelist Mary Renault and Wolcott Gibbs and Richard Ollard from the publishing world. ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]'' and ''[[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]]'' soon followed; then came another short-story collection, ''[[The Chian Wine and Other Stories]]'', and the prestigious commission for the biography ''[[Pablo Picasso|Pablo Ruiz Picasso]]''. ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'' followed in 1976, and during that year O'Brian wrote down a quantity of plot-ideas which demonstrate that he was by now thinking in terms of an extended series of novels.<br />
<br />
There followed fifteen years of steady progress, with work on the Aubrey-Maturin novels interrupted only by the biography ''[[Joseph Banks A Life]]'' (1987). O'Brian's growing repute as a specialist in naval history brought him a number of commissions as a reviewer; the novels acquired significant new admirers, such as the novelists Iris Murdoch and A.S. Byatt and the actor Charlton Heston, and the artist [[Geoff Hunt]] painted the first of his cover designs for ''[[The Letter of Marque (novel)|The Letter of Marque]]'' (1987). On the other hand, the series was without a publisher in the United States for ten years, and O'Brian's works were still generally regarded as adventure-stories of a slightly superior kind rather than as literature. (Even in the mid-1990s two prestigious British reference works, ''The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'' and ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'', included demonstrably lesser writers whose spheres intersected with O'Brian's but found no place for O'Brian himself.) The O'Brians suffered some personal setbacks during this period: a serious car accident in 1977, a fire in their private vineyard in 1984. Despite this they gave generous financial support to Mary's son Nikolai, who had been ruined by a long and costly lawsuit.<br />
<br />
===The price of fame===<br />
In 1990, W. W. Norton began to issue the Aubrey-Maturin books in paperback, restoring them to the American market after a long hiatus. O'Brian had at last begun to achieve wider recognition; journalists began to seek him out - not always to his gratification or theirs, since he was an intensely private man. He was better pleased with such acknowledgments as election to the Royal Society of Literature in 1991 and the grand dinner held in his honour at the Royal Naval College, [[Greenwich]], in 1996. He and Mary visited the United States for the first time in 1993, and in the following year the British Library published a collection of appreciative essays (see ''References'' below). The attention of the media took an unpleasant turn in 1998, when a BBC television documentary presented an unfriendly view of O'Brian's personal history and a number of newspapers followed the scent. In March of the same year he lost Mary, 'the master and pilot of my bark' as he had described her in a Latin dedication. He moved to [[Dublin]], where he was accommodated at [[Trinity College, Dublin|Trinity College]]. He published two more novels and was still working on another, the unfinished ''[[21]]'', within a few weeks of his death.<br />
<br />
He was [[Patrick O'Brian's Grave|entombed]] with his beloved Mary in [[Collioure]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
*'''King, Dean''' ''Patrick O'Brian: a life revealed''. New York: Henry Holt & Co. / London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2000.<br />
Unauthorised and fiercely resented by its subject, King's work is nonetheless a serious study embodying much information from Richard Russ, O'Brian's estranged son, and from acquaintances at Collioure and in the literary and publishing world. Its chief drawbacks (apart from some errors in chronology, inevitable given that King had no access to the personal records and recollections held by Nikolai Tolstoy) are a complete lack of references and a tendency to profess knowledge of O'Brian's private thoughts. Until the publication of Tolstoy's ssecond volume (October 2019) it was the only substantial source for O'Brian's life from 1950 onward.<br />
*'''O'Brian, Patrick''' 'Black, Choleric and Married', in Cunningham, A.E. (ed.) ''Patrick O'Brian: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography''. London, British Library, 1994.<br />
To be used with great caution and in close conjunction with Tolstoy (see below).<br />
*'''Tolstoy, Nikolai''' ''Patrick O'Brian: the making of the novelist''. London: Century Books, 2004.<br />
Tolstoy is the son of Mary O'Brian by her first marriage. From 1955 onwards he was probably closer to O'Brian than anybody else apart from Mary herself; besides his own invaluable memories, he holds O'Brian's library, critically important diaries and letters, and manuscripts of his published and unpublished literary works. This volume breaks off with the move to Collioure in the south of France. The second and final volume will cover the fifty remaining years of their lives at Collioure.<br />
*'''Tolstoy, Nikolai''' ''Patrick O'Brian: a very private life''. London: William Collins, 2019.<br />
The long-awaited sequel to the above, with much new information on personal life and family relationships as well as sources for names and motifs in the later works. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Publishing]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Patrick_O%27BrianPatrick O'Brian2020-01-16T17:09:59Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* New beginnings */ More about life in Collioure</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Himself2a.jpg|thumb|left|Patrick O'Brian]]<br />
'''Patrick O'Brian''', English novelist, short-story writer, translator and biographer, was born (as Richard Patrick Russ) at 'Walden', Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire, [[England]] on 12th December 1914 and died at The Fitzwilliam Hotel, [[Dublin]], [[Ireland]] on 2nd January 2000.<br />
<br />
==The life of Patrick O'Brian==<br />
<br />
'''Note''' ''While the author adopted the name of O'Brian only in August 1945 and was generally known as Patrick Russ until then, he will be referred to throughout this article, for convenience, as Patrick O'Brian or POB.''<br />
<br />
To see a complete listing of the works of Patrick O'Brian, please see the [[Complete works]] article.<br />
<br />
==='''Early years'''===<br />
<br />
Patrick O'Brian was the eighth child and youngest son of Charles and Jessie Russ; Charles was a physician with a particular interest in bacteriology and the treatment of venereal diseases. The boy's childhood was clouded by a series of misfortunes: he was subject to serious bouts of a bronchial disease, his mother died when he was three, his father's practice declined after the war, and during the 1920s the initially genial doctor changed in character, becoming morose and oppressive. In 1921 Dr. Russ banished all the children still at home, except Patrick, to boarding-schools or foster-parents. In December 1922 Dr. Russ took a second wife, Zoe Center, a widow (her husband had been a naval [[Lexicon:Surgeon|surgeon]]) with some property of her own. She took kindly to Patrick, who spent some time with her at a handsome old house near Worcester which she owned; its name, [[Melbury Lodge]], reappears in ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]''. Here the boy discovered a cache of 19th-century issues of the ''Gentleman's Magazine'' - his first encounter with the attitudes and idioms of a past era. In 1925, however, Dr. Russ was made bankrupt; Melbury Lodge was sold and Zoe and Patrick rejoined him in [[London]]. Patrick's meagre formal education now began with a year at Marylebone Grammar School; in the following year Mrs. Russ took him and his young sister Joan (his closest and almost his only companion in what was often a lonely and uneasy childhood) to Lewes, [[Sussex]], where he attended the local grammar-school for three years. An attempt in 1927 to gain entrance to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, came to nothing.<br />
<br />
While Patrick clearly enjoyed some aspects of the Lewes period (thinly-disguised references in ''[[Richard Temple]]'', and a few personal comments from later years, leave no doubt of this), we know nothing of his achievements at school. It is clear, however, that he had discovered the joy of language and creativity on his own account, for in about 1927 he began to write a book, ''[[Caesar]]''. Dr. Russ looked with unusual kindness on this endeavour and arranged for its publication in 1930; by this time he had the boy living with him as a kind of laboratory assistant. A short story, ''[[Skogula]]'', followed in 1931, and throughout the decade Patrick continued to produce stories (usually with animals as the central characters, like both those mentioned) for boys' periodicals and annuals. An anthology of these, ''[[Beasts Royal]]'', appeared in 1934. <br />
<br />
In the early 1930s Patrick studied languages and history in evening classes at Birkbeck College, London University. He was less successful in an attempt to enter the Royal Air Force as a pilot officer and was dismissed from his training course after a few weeks. At about this time Dr. Russ abandoned the remains of his practice and moved away from the capital. Soon afterwards Patrick returned to London and began life on his own account.<br />
<br />
==='''Love and war'''===<br />
<br />
Little is known for certain of Patrick's four years in London. He seems to have lived in a succession of lodgings and may have studied art for a while. In February 1936 he married Elizabeth Jones, an orphan from Wales; a son Richard was born in February 1937 and a daughter Jane, a sufferer from spina bifida, two years later. According to Tolstoy (see ''References'' below), O'Brian may have visited Ireland in 1936 - he was undoubtedly in Dublin during 1937 - and it is probable that whatever direct knowledge of sailing he possessed also derives from this period. (Tolstoy proposes to identify the yacht-owning 'Cousin Edward' whom O'Brian mentions in his autobiographical sketch of 1994 as Edward Taaffe, a friend who was a witness at his wedding and whose name was used long afterwards in ''[[The Commodore (novel)|The Commodore]]''.) During 1937 O'Brian worked as a travel courier and visited Locarno in Italian Switzerland. At about the same time he began work on a study of the Bestiaries (medieval treatises in which facts and fancies about the animal world are treated allegorically from a Christian viewpoint); clearly he must have achieved some fluency in Latin by this time. 1938 saw the publication, by Oxford University Press, of his first adult novel, ''[[Hussein]]''. In the following year he fell ill, and on his recovery his brothers Godfrey and Victor rented a cottage in Suffolk for the family.<br />
<br />
Some time in 1938, O'Brian had met Mary Tolstoy (née Wicksteed), the beautiful and spirited English wife of a Russian nobleman. By the autumn of 1940 both of them were working as volunteer ambulance-drivers in blitz-torn London. Two years later, after Mary's divorce, they set up home together in an 18th-century house in Chelsea. In the previous year O'Brian had joined Political Warfare Executive (PWE), an organisation which developed propaganda and prepared material for agents working in occupied Europe, and here Mary also found employment. O'Brian's work included the drafting of topographical and cultural notes on various locations in [[France]] (including the region around [[Collioure]] where he was eventually to live), and these were well regarded by his superiors. Another event of 1942 was a visit from his brother Michael, who had long since emigrated to [[Australia]] and who was now a fighter pilot; O'Brian later identified Michael as in some measure a model for [[Jack Aubrey]]. In July 1945, divorced by Elizabeth, the author married Mary, and a few weeks later he formally changed his name to Patrick O'Brian; the unusual spelling of the surname seems to derive from that of a ship-owner in a Victorian insurance contract which he had transcribed from an unknown source. During this year O'Brian began to prepare an anthology drawn from 17th- and 18th-century books on travel and exploration - his first significant literary work since 1940; this finally reached the bookshops in 1947.<br />
<br />
===New beginnings===<br />
In October 1945, with their occupation at PWE gone, the O'Brians were confronted with the need to economise. They settled in a tiny cottage, Fron Wen, overlooking the valley of Cwm Croesor in Caernarvonshire, North Wales, where they lived a life of austere self-sufficiency. The Welsh period, which lasted for four years (the last eighteen months in a larger house), was a time of hardship, anxiety over the custody and education of Richard and, for the most part, creative paralysis; only a few stories emerged near the end of the period. Nonetheless, the Welsh episode gave O'Brian much: it deepened his knowledge of the natural world, sharpened his aptitude for self-support, enabled him to work as part of a team (he willingly shared in the labours of the sheep-farmers) while retaining his independence, and planted many a slow-growing but fruitful seed in his mind.<br />
<br />
The autumn of 1949 brought another great change. Believing (as he remarked) that poverty was easier to bear in a warm climate, O'Brian moved to Collioure, a largely [[Catalonia|Catalan]]-speaking seaside village near Perpignan in southern France. Here, apart from an episode in Cornwall in the autumn of 1954, the O'Brians would make their home for the rest of their life together – initially in the town and later in a house, ''Correch d'en Baus'', much enlarged and modified by O'Brian himself over the years. Books began to appear again: ''[[The Last Pool and Other Stories]]'' (a collection of stories written over the previous ten years or more) in 1950, ''[[Testimonies]]'' in 1952 and ''[[The Catalans A Novel]]'' in 1953. 1954 saw publication of ''[[The Road to Samarcand]]'', the novel-length successor to Sullivan/Ross stories he had published much earlier for the ''Oxford Annual for Boys'' while still writing under the name P.R. Russ. O'Brian was now beginning to gather critical approval on both sides of the Atlantic.<br />
<br />
In 1945 Mary had given her husband an early edition of Richard Walter's account of [[George Anson]]'s great voyage of the 1740s. From this grew ''[[The Golden Ocean]]'', the first of O'Brian's sea novels, written very quickly in 1953 and published to considerable acclaim in 1956. ''[[The Unknown Shore]]'' followed in 1959, but in the next novel, the partly autobiographical ''[[Richard Temple]]'' (1962), character once more took precedence over adventure. By now O'Brian was augmenting his still meagre earnings with a series of well-regarded translations from the French, which helped to make his name known in the United States.<br />
<br />
===Enter Aubrey and Maturin===<br />
[[C.S. Forester]], the doyen of nautical novelists and a much-loved figure on both sides of the Atlantic, had died in 1966. The American publishing house of Lippincott turned to O'Brian for a new work on the same theme, and the result was ''[[Master and Commander (novel)|Master and Commander]]'', published in 1969. The book won O'Brian many plaudits and some lasting friends, such as the novelist Mary Renault and Wolcott Gibbs and Richard Ollard from the publishing world. ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]'' and ''[[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]]'' soon followed; then came another short-story collection, ''[[The Chian Wine and Other Stories]]'', and the prestigious commission for the biography ''[[Pablo Picasso|Pablo Ruiz Picasso]]''. ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'' followed in 1976, and during that year O'Brian wrote down a quantity of plot-ideas which demonstrate that he was by now thinking in terms of an extended series of novels.<br />
<br />
There followed fifteen years of steady progress, with work on the Aubrey-Maturin novels interrupted only by the biography ''[[Joseph Banks A Life]]'' (1987). O'Brian's growing repute as a specialist in naval history brought him a number of commissions as a reviewer; the novels acquired significant new admirers, such as the novelists Iris Murdoch and A.S. Byatt and the actor Charlton Heston, and the artist [[Geoff Hunt]] painted the first of his cover designs for ''[[The Letter of Marque (novel)|The Letter of Marque]]'' (1987). On the other hand, the series was without a publisher in the United States for ten years, and O'Brian's works were still generally regarded as adventure-stories of a slightly superior kind rather than as literature. (Even in the mid-1990s two prestigious British reference works, ''The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'' and ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'', included demonstrably lesser writers whose spheres intersected with O'Brian's but found no place for O'Brian himself.) The O'Brians suffered some personal setbacks during this period: a serious car accident in 1977, a fire in their private vineyard in 1984. Despite this they gave generous financial support to Mary's son Nikolai, who had been ruined by a long and costly lawsuit.<br />
<br />
===The price of fame===<br />
In 1990, W. W. Norton began to issue the Aubrey-Maturin books in paperback, restoring them to the American market after a long hiatus. O'Brian had at last begun to achieve wider recognition; journalists began to seek him out - not always to his gratification or theirs, since he was an intensely private man. He was better pleased with such acknowledgments as election to the Royal Society of Literature in 1991 and the grand dinner held in his honour at the Royal Naval College, [[Greenwich]], in 1996. He and Mary visited the United States for the first time in 1993, and in the following year the British Library published a collection of appreciative essays (see ''References'' below). The attention of the media took an unpleasant turn in 1998, when a BBC television documentary presented an unfriendly view of O'Brian's personal history and a number of newspapers followed the scent. In March of the same year he lost Mary, 'the master and pilot of my bark' as he had described her in a Latin dedication. He moved to [[Dublin]], where he was accommodated at [[Trinity College, Dublin|Trinity College]]. He published two more novels and was still working on another, the unfinished ''[[21]]'', within a few weeks of his death.<br />
<br />
He was [[Patrick O'Brian's Grave|entombed]] with his beloved Mary in [[Collioure]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
*'''King, Dean''' ''Patrick O'Brian: a life revealed''. New York: Henry Holt & Co. / London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2000.<br />
Unauthorised and fiercely resented by its subject, King's work is nonetheless a serious study embodying much information from Richard Russ, O'Brian's estranged son, and from acquaintances at Collioure and in the literary and publishing world. Its chief drawbacks (apart from some errors in chronology, inevitable given that King had no access to the personal records and recollections held by Nikolai Tolstoy) are a complete lack of references and a tendency to profess knowledge of O'Brian's private thoughts. Until the publication of Tolstoy's ssecond volume (October 2019) it was the only substantial source for O'Brian's life from 1950 onward.<br />
*'''O'Brian, Patrick''' 'Black, Choleric and Married', in Cunningham, A.E. (ed.) ''Patrick O'Brian: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography''. London, British Library, 1994.<br />
To be used with great caution and in close conjunction with Tolstoy (see below).<br />
*'''Tolstoy, Nikolai''' ''Patrick O'Brian: the making of the novelist''. London: Century Books, 2004.<br />
Tolstoy is the son of Mary O'Brian by her first marriage. From 1955 onwards he was probably closer to O'Brian than anybody else apart from Mary herself; besides his own invaluable memories, he holds O'Brian's library, critically important diaries and letters, and manuscripts of his published and unpublished literary works. This volume breaks off with the move to Collioure in the south of France. The second and final volume will cover the fifty remaining years of their lives at Collioure.<br />
*'''Tolstoy, Nikolai''' ''Patrick O'Brian: a very private life''. London: William Collins, 2019.<br />
The long-awaited sequel to the above, with much new information on personal life and family relationships as well as sources for names and motifs in the later works. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Publishing]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Patrick_O%27BrianPatrick O'Brian2020-01-16T17:01:35Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* References */ Details of Tolstoy's second volume</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Himself2a.jpg|thumb|left|Patrick O'Brian]]<br />
'''Patrick O'Brian''', English novelist, short-story writer, translator and biographer, was born (as Richard Patrick Russ) at 'Walden', Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire, [[England]] on 12th December 1914 and died at The Fitzwilliam Hotel, [[Dublin]], [[Ireland]] on 2nd January 2000.<br />
<br />
==The life of Patrick O'Brian==<br />
<br />
'''Note''' ''While the author adopted the name of O'Brian only in August 1945 and was generally known as Patrick Russ until then, he will be referred to throughout this article, for convenience, as Patrick O'Brian or POB.''<br />
<br />
To see a complete listing of the works of Patrick O'Brian, please see the [[Complete works]] article.<br />
<br />
==='''Early years'''===<br />
<br />
Patrick O'Brian was the eighth child and youngest son of Charles and Jessie Russ; Charles was a physician with a particular interest in bacteriology and the treatment of venereal diseases. The boy's childhood was clouded by a series of misfortunes: he was subject to serious bouts of a bronchial disease, his mother died when he was three, his father's practice declined after the war, and during the 1920s the initially genial doctor changed in character, becoming morose and oppressive. In 1921 Dr. Russ banished all the children still at home, except Patrick, to boarding-schools or foster-parents. In December 1922 Dr. Russ took a second wife, Zoe Center, a widow (her husband had been a naval [[Lexicon:Surgeon|surgeon]]) with some property of her own. She took kindly to Patrick, who spent some time with her at a handsome old house near Worcester which she owned; its name, [[Melbury Lodge]], reappears in ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]''. Here the boy discovered a cache of 19th-century issues of the ''Gentleman's Magazine'' - his first encounter with the attitudes and idioms of a past era. In 1925, however, Dr. Russ was made bankrupt; Melbury Lodge was sold and Zoe and Patrick rejoined him in [[London]]. Patrick's meagre formal education now began with a year at Marylebone Grammar School; in the following year Mrs. Russ took him and his young sister Joan (his closest and almost his only companion in what was often a lonely and uneasy childhood) to Lewes, [[Sussex]], where he attended the local grammar-school for three years. An attempt in 1927 to gain entrance to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, came to nothing.<br />
<br />
While Patrick clearly enjoyed some aspects of the Lewes period (thinly-disguised references in ''[[Richard Temple]]'', and a few personal comments from later years, leave no doubt of this), we know nothing of his achievements at school. It is clear, however, that he had discovered the joy of language and creativity on his own account, for in about 1927 he began to write a book, ''[[Caesar]]''. Dr. Russ looked with unusual kindness on this endeavour and arranged for its publication in 1930; by this time he had the boy living with him as a kind of laboratory assistant. A short story, ''[[Skogula]]'', followed in 1931, and throughout the decade Patrick continued to produce stories (usually with animals as the central characters, like both those mentioned) for boys' periodicals and annuals. An anthology of these, ''[[Beasts Royal]]'', appeared in 1934. <br />
<br />
In the early 1930s Patrick studied languages and history in evening classes at Birkbeck College, London University. He was less successful in an attempt to enter the Royal Air Force as a pilot officer and was dismissed from his training course after a few weeks. At about this time Dr. Russ abandoned the remains of his practice and moved away from the capital. Soon afterwards Patrick returned to London and began life on his own account.<br />
<br />
==='''Love and war'''===<br />
<br />
Little is known for certain of Patrick's four years in London. He seems to have lived in a succession of lodgings and may have studied art for a while. In February 1936 he married Elizabeth Jones, an orphan from Wales; a son Richard was born in February 1937 and a daughter Jane, a sufferer from spina bifida, two years later. According to Tolstoy (see ''References'' below), O'Brian may have visited Ireland in 1936 - he was undoubtedly in Dublin during 1937 - and it is probable that whatever direct knowledge of sailing he possessed also derives from this period. (Tolstoy proposes to identify the yacht-owning 'Cousin Edward' whom O'Brian mentions in his autobiographical sketch of 1994 as Edward Taaffe, a friend who was a witness at his wedding and whose name was used long afterwards in ''[[The Commodore (novel)|The Commodore]]''.) During 1937 O'Brian worked as a travel courier and visited Locarno in Italian Switzerland. At about the same time he began work on a study of the Bestiaries (medieval treatises in which facts and fancies about the animal world are treated allegorically from a Christian viewpoint); clearly he must have achieved some fluency in Latin by this time. 1938 saw the publication, by Oxford University Press, of his first adult novel, ''[[Hussein]]''. In the following year he fell ill, and on his recovery his brothers Godfrey and Victor rented a cottage in Suffolk for the family.<br />
<br />
Some time in 1938, O'Brian had met Mary Tolstoy (née Wicksteed), the beautiful and spirited English wife of a Russian nobleman. By the autumn of 1940 both of them were working as volunteer ambulance-drivers in blitz-torn London. Two years later, after Mary's divorce, they set up home together in an 18th-century house in Chelsea. In the previous year O'Brian had joined Political Warfare Executive (PWE), an organisation which developed propaganda and prepared material for agents working in occupied Europe, and here Mary also found employment. O'Brian's work included the drafting of topographical and cultural notes on various locations in [[France]] (including the region around [[Collioure]] where he was eventually to live), and these were well regarded by his superiors. Another event of 1942 was a visit from his brother Michael, who had long since emigrated to [[Australia]] and who was now a fighter pilot; O'Brian later identified Michael as in some measure a model for [[Jack Aubrey]]. In July 1945, divorced by Elizabeth, the author married Mary, and a few weeks later he formally changed his name to Patrick O'Brian; the unusual spelling of the surname seems to derive from that of a ship-owner in a Victorian insurance contract which he had transcribed from an unknown source. During this year O'Brian began to prepare an anthology drawn from 17th- and 18th-century books on travel and exploration - his first significant literary work since 1940; this finally reached the bookshops in 1947.<br />
<br />
===New beginnings===<br />
In October 1945, with their occupation at PWE gone, the O'Brians were confronted with the need to economise. They settled in a tiny cottage, Fron Wen, overlooking the valley of Cwm Croesor in Caernarvonshire, North Wales, where they lived a life of austere self-sufficiency. The Welsh period, which lasted for four years (the last eighteen months in a larger house), was a time of hardship, anxiety over the custody and education of Richard and, for the most part, creative paralysis; only a few stories emerged near the end of the period. Nonetheless, the Welsh episode gave O'Brian much: it deepened his knowledge of the natural world, sharpened his aptitude for self-support, enabled him to work as part of a team (he willingly shared in the labours of the sheep-farmers) while retaining his independence, and planted many a slow-growing but fruitful seed in his mind.<br />
<br />
The autumn of 1949 brought another great change. Believing (as he remarked) that poverty was easier to bear in a warm climate, O'Brian moved to Collioure, a largely [[Catalonia|Catalan]]-speaking seaside village near Perpignan in southern France. Here, apart from an episode in Cornwall in 1954, the O'Brians would make their home for the rest of their life together. Books began to appear again: ''[[The Last Pool and Other Stories]]'' (a collection of stories written over the previous ten years or more) in 1950, ''[[Testimonies]]'' in 1952 and ''[[The Catalans A Novel]]'' in 1953. 1954 saw publication of ''[[The Road to Samarcand]]'', the novel-length successor to Sullivan/Ross stories he had published much earlier for the ''Oxford Annual for Boys'' while still writing under the name P.R. Russ. O'Brian was now beginning to gather critical approval on both sides of the Atlantic.<br />
<br />
In 1945 Mary had given her husband an early edition of Richard Walter's account of [[George Anson]]'s great voyage of the 1740s. From this grew ''[[The Golden Ocean]]'', the first of O'Brian's sea novels, written very quickly in 1953 and published to considerable acclaim in 1956. ''[[The Unknown Shore]]'' followed in 1959, but in the next novel, the partly autobiographical ''[[Richard Temple]]'' (1962), character once more took precedence over adventure. By now O'Brian was augmenting his still meagre earnings with a series of well-regarded translations from the French, which helped to make his name known in the United States.<br />
<br />
===Enter Aubrey and Maturin===<br />
[[C.S. Forester]], the doyen of nautical novelists and a much-loved figure on both sides of the Atlantic, had died in 1966. The American publishing house of Lippincott turned to O'Brian for a new work on the same theme, and the result was ''[[Master and Commander (novel)|Master and Commander]]'', published in 1969. The book won O'Brian many plaudits and some lasting friends, such as the novelist Mary Renault and Wolcott Gibbs and Richard Ollard from the publishing world. ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]'' and ''[[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]]'' soon followed; then came another short-story collection, ''[[The Chian Wine and Other Stories]]'', and the prestigious commission for the biography ''[[Pablo Picasso|Pablo Ruiz Picasso]]''. ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'' followed in 1976, and during that year O'Brian wrote down a quantity of plot-ideas which demonstrate that he was by now thinking in terms of an extended series of novels.<br />
<br />
There followed fifteen years of steady progress, with work on the Aubrey-Maturin novels interrupted only by the biography ''[[Joseph Banks A Life]]'' (1987). O'Brian's growing repute as a specialist in naval history brought him a number of commissions as a reviewer; the novels acquired significant new admirers, such as the novelists Iris Murdoch and A.S. Byatt and the actor Charlton Heston, and the artist [[Geoff Hunt]] painted the first of his cover designs for ''[[The Letter of Marque (novel)|The Letter of Marque]]'' (1987). On the other hand, the series was without a publisher in the United States for ten years, and O'Brian's works were still generally regarded as adventure-stories of a slightly superior kind rather than as literature. (Even in the mid-1990s two prestigious British reference works, ''The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'' and ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'', included demonstrably lesser writers whose spheres intersected with O'Brian's but found no place for O'Brian himself.) The O'Brians suffered some personal setbacks during this period: a serious car accident in 1977, a fire in their private vineyard in 1984. Despite this they gave generous financial support to Mary's son Nikolai, who had been ruined by a long and costly lawsuit.<br />
<br />
===The price of fame===<br />
In 1990, W. W. Norton began to issue the Aubrey-Maturin books in paperback, restoring them to the American market after a long hiatus. O'Brian had at last begun to achieve wider recognition; journalists began to seek him out - not always to his gratification or theirs, since he was an intensely private man. He was better pleased with such acknowledgments as election to the Royal Society of Literature in 1991 and the grand dinner held in his honour at the Royal Naval College, [[Greenwich]], in 1996. He and Mary visited the United States for the first time in 1993, and in the following year the British Library published a collection of appreciative essays (see ''References'' below). The attention of the media took an unpleasant turn in 1998, when a BBC television documentary presented an unfriendly view of O'Brian's personal history and a number of newspapers followed the scent. In March of the same year he lost Mary, 'the master and pilot of my bark' as he had described her in a Latin dedication. He moved to [[Dublin]], where he was accommodated at [[Trinity College, Dublin|Trinity College]]. He published two more novels and was still working on another, the unfinished ''[[21]]'', within a few weeks of his death.<br />
<br />
He was [[Patrick O'Brian's Grave|entombed]] with his beloved Mary in [[Collioure]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
*'''King, Dean''' ''Patrick O'Brian: a life revealed''. New York: Henry Holt & Co. / London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2000.<br />
Unauthorised and fiercely resented by its subject, King's work is nonetheless a serious study embodying much information from Richard Russ, O'Brian's estranged son, and from acquaintances at Collioure and in the literary and publishing world. Its chief drawbacks (apart from some errors in chronology, inevitable given that King had no access to the personal records and recollections held by Nikolai Tolstoy) are a complete lack of references and a tendency to profess knowledge of O'Brian's private thoughts. Until the publication of Tolstoy's ssecond volume (October 2019) it was the only substantial source for O'Brian's life from 1950 onward.<br />
*'''O'Brian, Patrick''' 'Black, Choleric and Married', in Cunningham, A.E. (ed.) ''Patrick O'Brian: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography''. London, British Library, 1994.<br />
To be used with great caution and in close conjunction with Tolstoy (see below).<br />
*'''Tolstoy, Nikolai''' ''Patrick O'Brian: the making of the novelist''. London: Century Books, 2004.<br />
Tolstoy is the son of Mary O'Brian by her first marriage. From 1955 onwards he was probably closer to O'Brian than anybody else apart from Mary herself; besides his own invaluable memories, he holds O'Brian's library, critically important diaries and letters, and manuscripts of his published and unpublished literary works. This volume breaks off with the move to Collioure in the south of France. The second and final volume will cover the fifty remaining years of their lives at Collioure.<br />
*'''Tolstoy, Nikolai''' ''Patrick O'Brian: a very private life''. London: William Collins, 2019.<br />
The long-awaited sequel to the above, with much new information on personal life and family relationships as well as sources for names and motifs in the later works. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Publishing]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/HMS_ShannonHMS Shannon2019-01-24T15:24:27Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Removal of accidental italicisation</p>
<hr />
<div>'''''HMS Shannon''''' was a 38 gun [[frigate]] of the Leda class, launched in 1806.<br />
<br />
''Shannon'' was under the command of [[Post Captain (rank)|Captain]] [[Philip Broke]] from her first commission to 1813. Broke drilled his crew to an extremely high standard of gunnery. Following the shocking series of three consecutive defeats of [[Great Britain|British]] frigates in actions against the heavy [[United States|American]] 44 gun "super-frigates", most notably against the [[USN Constitution|USN ''Constitution'']], Broke was determined to engage an American warship in single combat. So he chose to burn captured American merchant vessels rather than send them to [[Halifax]] as a valuable [[prize]]s, since that would cost him essential crew. Broke found his opportunity with the 38 gun ''[[USN Chesapeake]]'', which was refitting in [[Boston]] harbor under the command of Captain [[James Lawrence]].<br />
<br />
''Shannon'' blockaded the harbor, and sent Captain Lawrence a formal challenge. In fact, the ''Chesapeake'' set sail before Lawrence received the letter. On June 1st 1813, ''Chesapeake'' emerged from the harbor to engage the ''Shannon''. Broke's gunnery training paid off, their fire was effective and devastating from the outset. Within fifteen minutes the ''Shannon'''s crew had boarded and captured the ''Chesapeake''. Captain Broke was seriously wounded while boarding, and Captain Lawrence suffered a mortal wound early in the battle. This victory against an American frigate, albeit one with a relatively untrained crew, raised the morale of the [[Royal Navy]], and the Americans honored the heroism of Captain Lawrence, whose last order,"Don't give up the ship!" has become one of the most famous phrases in the US Navy.<br />
<br />
<br />
{{Spoiler|The Fortune of War}}<br />
<br />
<br />
== In the Canon ==<br />
<br />
In Chapter 8 of ''[[The Fortune of War]]'', [[Jack Aubrey]], [[Stephen Maturin]] and [[Diana Villiers]] escape in a small boat from Boston and are picked up by ''Shannon'' just before her action with the ''Chesapeake''. The action is described in Chapter 9. Despite his still unhealed wound, Aubrey assists in boarding the ''Chesapeake'' while Maturin treats the injured with the ship's surgeon. She sails into [[Halifax]] along with her prize, ''Chesapeake'' in the first chapter of ''[[The Surgeon's Mate (novel)|The Surgeon's Mate]]''. Captain Lawrence dies of his wounds and is buried with full military honours in Halifax. Jack Aubrey attends the graveside funeral. <br />
<br />
[[Category:Historical ships|Shannon, HMS]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/The_Catalans_A_NovelThe Catalans A Novel2014-01-03T16:20:26Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* The authorial position */ Reference to Kipling as model for authorial technique</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:catalans_cover_hcpb.jpg|right|thumb|Cover]]<br />
<br />
<br />
'''The Catalans''' is [[Patrick O'Brian]]'s second adult novel, written at [[Collioure]] and published in 1953. The original British-market title was ''The Frozen Flame'', but the most recent British edition (HarperCollins paperback, 2006) has adopted the more straightforward American title.<br />
<br />
==Plot introduction==<br />
''For more details about the plot, which will contain '''spoilers''', see [[Summary for The Catalans A Novel]]''<br />
<br />
Alain Roig, a doctor working in the Far East, is summoned back to his childhood home on the French-Catalonian border to resolve a bitter family dispute: his cousin Xavier, a widower and a respected lawyer and local politician, has horrified his female relatives by planning to marry his secretary Madeleine, the beautiful daughter of a local shopkeeper. Alain conscientiously probes the motives and intentions of the ill-matched pair. Xavier is revealed as a man who believes, with horror, that he has lost the ability to feel; his wife is long dead, he has found it impossible to love his graceless son Dédé, and Madeleine represents his last hope of a connection with the world of life and emotion. Alain's own detachment is undermined as he re-establishes himself in the once familiar world of fishing-fleet and vintage, whose ancient habits and rituals provide both a background and a catalyst for the dramatic resolution.<br />
<br />
==Major characters in ''The Catalans A Novel''==<br />
*'''Alain Roig''' An idealistic physician<br />
*'''Margot Roig''' Alain's aunt, matriarch of the family<br />
*'''Xavier Roig''' Alain's cousin, lawyer and mayor of Saint-Féliu<br />
*'''Madeleine Fajal''' Xavier's typist and intended bride<br />
*'''Francisco Cortade''' Fisherman and artist, Madeleine's estranged husband<br />
*'''Marcel Dumesnil''' Failed novelist; friend of Francisco<br />
<br />
==Themes and motifs==<br />
This book began as a study of a man without a heart: a decent, civilised, humane person who has to live with the sense that he has no soul. However, Xavier is not the central character for much of the time, and in a larger sense ''The Catalans'' is a novel about pretence: not the raw self-seeking hypocrisy so familiar from Dickens or Thackeray, but a kind of dogged, weary, even despairing falsification of one’s inner life – disguising it where it exists, fabricating an imitation out of spurious ingredients where it does not – undertaken not with any hope of gain but simply for the sake of expediency or for a quiet life or even out of a mistaken sense of duty. All the main characters are affected by this flaw in their own respective ways. The two artists, Francisco the painter and Marcel the writer, show it in its simplest form: the one posing as an unspoiled folk-artist, the other a burned-out case who struggles to uphold his reputation among his relatives by binding up copies of foreign novels with forged title-pages and presenting them as translations of his own works. Alain, for his part, is constrained by the attitudes of those around him to mimic the altruistic and sympathetic manner that they expect from a doctor. Aunt Margot feels herself bound to move against Madeleine, whom she genuinely likes and has hitherto encouraged, because of her belief that Xavier’s liaison will not only create scandal but also destroy his political credibility. And Xavier himself, appalled by the consciousness that he met his wife’s illness with irritation and her death with relief, and that he has never felt anything except disgust for his son, can find no other response than to act out the part of an upright, responsible, charitable citizen; he is certain that these pretences cannot save him from eternal damnation, and yet he cannot let go of them.<br />
<br />
Madeleine herself is not immune; she finds Xavier physically repulsive, but her sense of obligation, born of his real kindness and courtesy towards her, almost results in her binding herself in a marriage which must be joyless and desolate at best. And yet, in an ironic way, Xavier is right in thinking that she may point the way into a better and happier world. She has been brought up with tenderness and affection, and this has set its mark on her: as a child ‘she was dirty . . . untruthful and dishonest. But being less battered, she was less dirty, untruthful and dishonest than the rest.’ In short, without being in any way a saint, she is set apart from the petty concerns and obsessions of the people about her; she has a kind of rightness which is beyond analysis – a concept which O’Brian will explore again with the character of [[Diana Villiers]].<br />
<br />
===The authorial position===<br />
<br />
In this book, O’Brian for the first time achieves the distinctively detached and impersonal narrative voice of his mature work. There is a peculiarity about this which may easily escape notice: it has the remoteness and impassivity of a deity, but not the omniscience. Instead of knowing and seeing everything, this narrator chooses to co-opt the senses and the mind of one character at a time, seeing and hearing with that person’s eyes and ears and thinking that person’s thoughts; all the other personages of the story are seen only from the outside, as the chosen character may be presumed to perceive them or as any observer present at the scene might have perceived them. In the Aubrey-Maturin novels, this treatment is almost always bestowed on [[Stephen Maturin]], occasionally on [[Jack Aubrey]], but very rarely on anybody else. (The model for this approach seems to be Jane Austen; in ''Mansfield Park'', for example, she uses Fanny as a medium for the most part, just as O’Brian uses Maturin.) In ''The Catalans'' the focus is generally on Alain, although Madeleine has a chapter (the second) largely to herself, while in the final pages the spotlight shifts to Xavier with startling effect – a technique perhaps derived from some of Kipling's later stories, such as 'Aunt Ellen' – turning what might easily have been an over-tidy romantic ending into something both poignant and disturbing.<br />
<br />
==Echoes from the author's life==<br />
During his long soliloquy in chapter IV, Xavier describes his struggles to educate his deeply unsatisfactory son. The monstrous Dédé ('[H]e felt more malice than I should ever have supposed a child could contain') is clearly a pure invention, but when Xavier accuses him of being affectedly 'quaint' and giving 'a performance of himself as an arch, winning little boy', he closely echoes occasional complaints made in O'Brian's Welsh diaries, as quoted by his stepson and biographer Nikolai Tolstoy, concerning his own son. Equally true to life is the passage where Xavier, son of a bullying father, reveals his deep shame at having in turn become a domestic tyrant.<br />
<br />
Less distressingly, the novel makes extensive use of the scenery and society of the Franco-Catalan border where O'Brian had settled in 1949. In Alain's struggles to carry the basket of grapes down the hillside (chap. VIII), O'Brian reproduces his own enthusiastic if not entirely competent efforts to share in the work of his new neighbours, just as he had done in the sheep-shearing episode in ''[[Testimonies]]''.<br />
<br />
==Footnotes==<br />
The place-name Prabang, used for the territory (apparently somewhere in present-day Malaysia) where Alain has been stationed, will reappear in ''[[The Thirteen-Gun Salute]]''.<br />
<br />
===Alain foreshadows Stephen . . . ===<br />
In chapter 3 (page 64, HarperCollins paperback), Alain reacts to the sight of a pretty girl (not Madeleine) with a strikingly Irish idiom:<br />
<blockquote><br />
'My God,' he said, internally. 'Here's freshness; here's bloom. Here's the lovely sin of the world.'</blockquote><br />
<br />
It seems that already, fifteen years before ''[[Master and Commander (novel)|Master and Commander]]'', O'Brian had perceived something oddly compatible between Erin and Catalunya - a union which was to give birth to the character of Stephen Maturin.<br />
<br />
===. . . and Jack===<br />
From the same chapter (ibid., p.70)<br />
<blockquote>At this moment the phoenix (a suspicion that he might be able to make an epigram about cuckoos, phoenixes, and fornication drifted across the surface of Alain's mind) was bent over a heap of papers among the ruins of their dessert.</blockquote><br />
In much the same way, Jack Aubrey often trembles on the edge of a pun or witticism which he cannot quite formulate to his satisfaction.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Novels]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/CricketCricket2012-01-24T15:57:51Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* Requisites of the game */ Verbless sentence corrected</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Cricket''' is a game played with bat and ball in an open field by two teams of eleven players each. Long regarded as quintessentially English, the game seems to have developed in late mediaeval times in the agricultural south-eastern and central southern counties of [[England]], where the necessary level open spaces were readily available; the earliest definite reference to the game is in a legal document from Guildford (Surrey) dated 1598, in which 'kreckett' is said to have been played some fifty years before. Cricket was at first a game for country-folk, but in the late seventeenth century it began to be taken up by gentlemen; Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707-1751), father of King [[George III]], was an early enthusiast. Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), based in north [[London]], has given laws to the game since about 1787, superseding the Hambledon Club (named after a village in Kent) which is mentioned by O'Brian at one point.<br />
<br />
Cricket has a distant common ancestry with baseball and the two sports share some terminology even today (''umpire, run, inning[s]'' etc.)<br />
<br />
==Requisites of the game==<br />
Cricket is played on a ''ground'' or ''field'' of short grass in the shape of a circle or a broad ellipse, preferably about 150 yards (137.05m) across and perhaps slightly greater in length; it should be (but often is not) perfectly level and free from irregularities and obstructions. At or near the centre of the ground is the ''pitch'', a rectangle of closely-mown grass 22 yards (20.1m) long and 10ft (3.045m) wide (the width was not specified in the laws of the game until the 20th century).<br />
<br />
The pitch is marked out at each end with ''creases'', which are now painted in white; in early usage (until about 1870) they were sometimes cut or gouged into the turf itself. The ''bowling crease'' runs across each end of the pitch, terminated by short ''return creases'' at right angles to it, 94in (2.39m) apart. The ''popping-crease'' runs parallel to the bowling-crease at a distance of four feet (1.22m; originally 46 inches or 1.17m). At each end of the pitch, in the centre of the bowling-crease, a ''wicket'' is set up. In the canonic period this consisted of three ''stumps'' of turned wood, driven into the ground 3.5 inches (8.8cm) apart and standing to a height of two feet (0.61m), with a shorter stick called a ''bail'' laid across the top. (Between about 1825 and 1850 the stump height was increased to 27 inches (0.69m) and the single bail was replaced by two short ones. Until the 1770s there had been only two stumps; O'Brian mentions an argument among the spectators at a match regarding the date when the change took place.) The term ''wicket'' is sometimes applied to the whole pitch.<br />
<br />
The ''ball'' is a very hard sphere of polished leather, about 2.9in (7.45cm) in diameter and traditionally dyed a deep red; six rows of white stitching run round its circumference, forming the ''seam''.<br />
<br />
The ''bat'' is made of willow-tree wood, about 38in (just under 1m) long including the handle which is bound with black twine. Early bats (until about 1780) were club-shaped and slightly curved; thereafter we find a straight-sided bat with a broader blade slightly convex across its width. Initially the top of the new-style blade usually had sloping shoulders, so that the profile of the bat was like a champagne-bottle; the modern style of bat, with angular shoulders, is occasionally seen before 1800 and became standard by about 1850.<br />
<br />
==How cricket is played==<br />
To put it in the simplest possible terms, the basic objectives of cricket are that<br />
* '''The player with the bat (batsman)''' should score ''runs'' by hitting the ball and then, before his opponents can retrieve it, running to the opposite end of the pitch: and<br />
* '''The player with the ball (bowler)''' should break the batsman's wicket with the ball; when this is achieved the batsman in question is ''out'' and must leave the field.<br />
Much of the peculiar flavour of cricket results from incorporating this simple batsman-versus-bowler opposition within the structure of a team game.<br />
<br />
''The next paragraph describes the course of play as it would have been in [[Jack Aubrey]]'s day. Changes since then will be very briefly summarised later in this article.''<br />
<br />
Before the match begins, the captains of the two teams (or sides) toss a coin; the winner of the toss has the privilege of deciding whether his team will ''bat'' or ''field'' first. The captain of the fielding side (let us call it team A) designates one of his team (or himself) as the bowler; the remaining ten members (''fielders'', ''fieldsmen'' or in the parlance of the day ''lookers-out'') disperse themselves about the field as the captain directs. Two neutral judges (''umpires'') also position themselves, one behind the wicket at the end of the pitch from which the bowler intends to bowl, the other wide of the pitch at the other end. Then two members of the other team (B, say) come forth as batsmen. The one who is to face the bowling first takes his stand on the popping-crease in front of the wicket at the end of the pitch farther from the bowler; the other stands a little aside at the bowler's end. The umpire at the bowling end cries 'Play'; the bowler retires some yards beyond the umpire, turns, runs up to the wicket and, with one foot still behind the bowling-crease, delivers the ball with a straight-armed underarm action, usually intending that it shall bounce just in front of the batsman, and hoping that by a combination of speed, aerodynamic manipulation and sheer luck the ball will pass the bat and disturb the wicket. (In this case the unlucky batsman is said to have been ''bowled out'' or simply ''bowled''.) If on the other hand the batsman strikes the ball hard and far enough to give him the chance of making a run, he calls out to his colleague at the other end and each player sets out for the opposite end, touching his bat down between the popping-crease and the wicket as he arrives. If both players reach their destination unscathed, one run is credited to the striker; he and his team-mate remain at the ends they have now reached, so that the second batsman faces the bowling. However, the batsmen may take more than one run from a single stroke.<br />
<br />
When four successive balls have been bowled, the bowler's umpire calls 'Over'. The fieldsmen rearrange themselves in an approximate mirror-image of their previous configuration; only the batsmen keep their places. A second bowler is appointed, working from the opposite end to the first, and the four-ball sequence is repeated. At its end the players revert to their first positions.<br />
<br />
Whenever a ''wicket falls'' (that is, whenever a batsman is out), the next player from the batting side takes his place. When ten wickets have fallen, team B's ''innings'' is ended; it is now their turn to field while team A bats. In a full-scale match each side bats twice (has two inningses) and fields twice. The team which has scored the higher number of runs overall wins the match, provided all four inningses have been completed within the time available; however, if not all team A's wickets have fallen in their second innings, the game will be considered as drawn.<br />
<br />
A batsman normally stays at the wicket until he is out, no matter how many hours this takes. As all the batsmen must have their turn, it can be seen that cricket is inevitably a long-winded game. A full match normally lasts three days.<br />
<br />
===Ways of being out===<br />
A batsman may be out in several ways besides being bowled. He may be<br />
*'''Caught''' A ball, struck by the bat, is caught in a fieldsman's hands before touching the ground. Any runs completed by the batsmen while the ball is in the air will be disallowed.<br />
*'''Stumped''' A fieldsman uses the ball to break the wicket at a moment when neither of the batsman's feet, nor the tip of his bat, is touching ground behind the popping-crease (i.e. he has moved too far from the wicket).<br />
*'''Run out''' This may be called a variant of stumping; while the batsmen are taking a run, a fieldsman breaks one of the wickets with the ball as above.<br />
*'''Leg before wicket (LBW)''' A batsman, while facing the bowling, puts a leg in the path of a ball which would otherwise have struck the wicket.<br />
*'''Hit wicket''' A batsman breaks his own wicket with his bat, either by accident or (occasionally) because he wishes to end his innings.<br />
*'''Obstructing a fieldsman''' A batsman wilfully gets in the way of a fieldsman who is trying to catch or stop the ball.<br />
<br />
===Ways of adding to the score ('Extras')===<br />
In addition to runs scored by the batsmen, the batting side can also have its total score augmented through defaults committed by the other side, as follows:<br />
*'''Wide''' The bowler sends the ball so high, or so far to either side, that the batsman cannot reach it (one run).<br />
*'''No ball''' The bowler's back foot has passed the bowling-crease at the moment of delivery; or (rarely) the umpire considers that the bowler's arm action is irregular (one run)<br />
*'''Bye''' The ball, touching neither bat nor wicket, continues so far beyond the stumps that the batsmen have time to run. (In the early 1800s the term 'bye' was sometimes applied to all runs not scored with the bat, i.e. to all the types of extra listed in this section.)<br />
*'''Lost ball''' Five runs.<br />
These 'extras' are credited to the team as a whole, not to any individual batsman. A batsman can score runs off a no-ball (in which case his own run absorbs and supersedes the penalty run) but he cannot lose his wicket to it other than by being run out.<br />
<br />
===Matches 'against odds'===<br />
From the earliest days of cricket until the 1880s, it was common to apply a crude handicapping system by allowing the demonstrably weaker of two teams to play with a greater than usual number of men: fifteen, eighteen or even twenty-two.<br />
<br />
===Later developments===<br />
*'''Overs''' The number of balls in an over was increased to five in the 1870s and to six soon after 1900. In Australia an eight-ball over has been used.<br />
*'''Boundaries''' From the 1860s, a batsman who struck the ball so that it reached the perimeter of the field without being stopped was credited with four runs, or six if it had not touched the ground between bat and boundary-mark.<br />
*'''Leg byes''' From about 1840, batsmen could take runs off a ball which struck some part of the batsman's body (not in such a way as to count as 'leg before wicket') and then ran off out of the fieldsmen's immediate reach.<br />
*'''Declaration''' Since the late 1880s, it has been possible for a captain to 'declare [the innings closed]' before every batsman has had his turn at the wicket. This is often done by the side batting third in order to allow more time for getting the opponents all out, thus reducing the risk that they will last until close of play and so force a draw. Previously, the only way to achieve this was for an individual batsman to hit his wicket on purpose.<br />
*'''Bowling styles''' Until about 1835, only the underarm technique was recognised by the rules. It was however gradually succeeded by 'round-arm' bowling (the bowler's arm is raised diagonally above the shoulder) and then by 'overarm' (the bowler's arm is practically vertical); since the 1890s all bowlers, whatever their speed and method, have bowled overarm.<br />
<br />
=='Should you like to be given a middle, sir?'==<br />
In [[The Fortune of War]], [[Stephen Maturin|Stephen]] misunderstands this question put to him by the umpire; he pats his stomach and remarks 'Thank you, I already have one.' What the umpire meant was 'Would you like me to help you align your bat in front of the middle stump?' It is usual for a batsman, on coming to the wicket, to choose one or two stumps which he will principally defend (since the bat is not wide enough to cover all three) and to engage the umpire's help in finding the right position of the bat for this purpose. This is called ''taking guard''.<br />
<br />
==The cricketing scene in the film ''[[Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World|Master and Commander]]''==<br />
In Peter Weir's film, the crew of ''[[HMS Surprise (ship)|Surprise]]'' are briefly seen playing cricket on one of the [[Galapagos Islands]]; [[Barrett Bonden]] bowls a ball to [[Thomas Pullings|Tom Pullings]], who takes a run off it. Pullings's bat is of the 'champagne-bottle' type and so appropriate enough to the period (1805); not so Bonden's bowling, which is in the modern overarm style. In addition, the wicket appears to incorporate two short bails rather than one long one.<br />
<br />
In regard to the bowling, it has sometimes been argued that cricket matches in far-flung places would probably have included all manner of improvisations not recognised by the (very short) Laws of Cricket then in circulation, and that Bonden's bowling technique might be one of these. (In this context it should be mentioned that round-arm bowling was tried out by Tom Walker of Surrey and Hambledon as early as the 1790s, although the Laws current in the 1820s still treated the underarm technique as mandatory.) One such improvisation is seen during the run, when Pullings apparently hands the bat to his fellow-batsman as they cross; this was certainly never standard practice, but presumably the idea is that this bat is the only one aboard, so that the batsmen must share it. (Mr Lamb the carpenter could easily have fashioned another, given the material; but perhaps we must suppose that, after a long voyage involving some substantial repairs, there is no wood to spare for such a purpose.) <br />
<br />
[[Category:Leisure]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Duke_of_ClarenceDuke of Clarence2011-02-09T17:59:37Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Accession to throne as King William IV added</p>
<hr />
<div>His Royal Highness '''Prince William, Duke of Clarence''' (1765-1837) was the third son of King [[George III]]. He joined the [[Royal Navy]] in at the age of thirteen and was promoted to [[Lieutenant]] in 1785 and then [[Post Captain (rank)|Post Captain]] the following year. His reputation in the service was of an able officer but a strict disciplinarian. Politically he was not popular with the King or the high command of the Navy.<br />
<br />
He was created Duke of Clarence in 1790 and retired from active service at sea and was promoted to [[Rear Admiral]].He never exercised a sea-going command as an admiral. In 1827 he was appointed [[Lord High Admiral]]. One of his reforms was to abolish the use of the [[cat of nine tails|cat o'nine tails]]. In 1830 he became King on the death of his eldest brother King George IV, the former [[Prince Regent]].<br />
<br />
==In the Canon==<br />
He was a patient of [[Stephen Maturin]] on several occasions. He was a potentially problematic source of influence to Aubrey and Maturin due to his unpopularity within the Navy high command.<br />
In ''[[Blue at the Mizzen]]'', he asks [[Jack Aubrey]] to take on his "nephew", [[Horatio Hanson]] as a [[midshipman]]. However, Sir [[Joseph Blaine]] has already indicated to Maturin that Hanson is Clarence's own (natural) son.<br />
<br />
{{stub}}<br />
[[Category:Royal Naval officer (non-fictional)|Clarence, Duke of]]<br />
[[Category:Flag officers|Clarence, Duke of]]<br />
[[category:Historical people|Clarence, Duke of]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Caroline_HerschelCaroline Herschel2011-02-09T17:50:39Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Stylistic adjustments</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Caroline Lucretia Herschel''' (1750-1848) was a German-born astronomer who spent most of her working life in England. Born in Hanover in a family with a strong musical background, she had herself a great talent as a singer but her early life was dominated by domestic duties. In 1772, however, her brother Friedrich Wilhelm (1738-1822; generally known as Sir William Herschel) took her to England to act as his housekeeper; he had migrated several years previously and had established himself in a respectable musical position in [[Bath]]. William had also developed a passion for astronomy, and Caroline proved to be a dedicated helpmeet in this; during 1773 she worked with Wilhelm on the building of his first reflecting telescope, helping in the casting and polishing of the speculum (concave mirror) - a skill which, in ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', she is represented as passing on to [[Jack Aubrey]]. For some years Caroline also seemed to be developing a career of her own as a concert singer, but after 1778 her work with William absorbed all her attention.<br />
<br />
In 1781 William identified a new heavenly body, soon afterwards recognised as a planet, the first to be added to the solar system since ancient times; it was later named Uranus. This established his reputation as an astronomer, and in the following year he was offered a post by [[George III|King George III]] which entailed his moving to Datchet, near the royal residence at Windsor. Caroline accompanied him there and continued to share in his labours; from 1783 onwards she gradually built up a scientific reputation of her own, eventually discovering eight comets as well as making great improvements in the catalogue of stars originally compiled by John Flamsteed. She suffered a blow in 1788 when William's marriage to a wealthy widow robbed her of her place at the head of his household, but eventually she developed a warm relationship with William's son John, himself an outstanding scientist. On William's death Caroline returned to Hanover, but she retained her interest in astronomy and was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1828, followed by honorary membership seven years later. She remained alert and active to the last and was a constant attendant at musical events.<br />
<br />
Caroline Herschel was a small woman who suffered in youth from the disfiguring effects of smallpox as well as typhus fever, but her correspondence (edited by her niece in 1869) and journals show that she never lost her courage or her sense of humour.<br />
<br />
==In the Canon==<br />
<br />
In Chapter 1 of ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', Jack Aubrey pays enthusiastic tribute to Caroline, who has taught him how to grind the reflector of his telescope and often spends many hours of the night with him in his home-made observatory - much to the discomfiture of [[Sophie Aubrey|Sophie]].<br />
<br />
[[Category:Historical people|Herschel, Caroline]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Caroline_HerschelCaroline Herschel2011-02-09T17:47:41Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Dates added</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Caroline Lucretia Herschel''' (1750-1848) was a German-born astronomer who spent most of her working life in England. Born in Hanover in a family with a strong musical background, she had herself a great talent as a singer but her early life was dominated by domestic duties. In 1772, however, her brother Friedrich Wilhelm (1738-1822; generally known as Sir William Herschel) took her to England to act as his housekeeper; he had migrated several years previously and had established himself in a respectable musical position in [[Bath]]. William had also developed a passion for astronomy, and Caroline proved to be a dedicated helpmeet in this; during 1773 she worked with Wilhelm on the building of his first reflecting telescope, helping in the casting and polishing of the speculum (concave mirror) - a skill which, in ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', she is represented as passing on to [[Jack Aubrey]]. For some years Caroline also seemed to be developing a career of her own as a concert singer, but after 1778 her work with William absorbed all her attention.<br />
<br />
In 1781 William identified a new heavenly body, soon afterwards recognised as a planet, the first to be added to the solar system since ancient times; it was afterwards named Uranus. This established his reputation as an astronomer, and in the following year he was offered a post by which entailed his moving to Datchet, near the royal residence at Windsor. Caroline accompanied him there and continued to share in his labours; from 1783 onwards she gradually built up a scientific reputation of her own, eventually discovering eight comets as well as making great improvements in the catalogue of stars originally compiled by John Flamsteed. She suffered a blow in 1788 when William's marriage to a wealthy widow robbed her of her place at the head of his household, but eventually she developed a warm relationship with William's son John, himself an outstanding scientist. On William's death Caroline returned to Hanover, but she retained her interest in astronomy and was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1828, followed by honorary membership seven years later. She remained alert and active to the last and was a constant attendant at musical events.<br />
<br />
Caroline Herschel was a small woman who suffered in youth from the disfiguring effects of smallpox as well as typhus fever, but her correspondence (edited by her niece in 1869) and journals show that she never lost her courage or her sense of humour.<br />
<br />
==In the Canon==<br />
<br />
In Chapter 1 of ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', Jack Aubrey pays enthusiastic tribute to Caroline, who has taught him how to grind the reflector of his telescope and often spends many hours of the night with him in his home-made observatory - much to the discomfiture of [[Sophie Aubrey|Sophie]].<br />
<br />
[[Category:Historical people|Herschel, Caroline]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/The_Mauritius_CommandThe Mauritius Command2010-03-24T17:36:28Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* The Mauritius campaign in history */Usage of italic/Roman adjusted: Roman=British ship, italic=foreign</p>
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<div>[[Image:Tmc-cover-hc.jpg|right|thumb|Cover]]'''The Mauritius Command''' is the fourth book in the [[Aubrey-Maturin series]]. It starts a number of years after the events of the novel ''[[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]]''. The book opens with scenes of Aubrey's domestic life at [[Ashgrove Cottage]]. Aubrey has been without a sea-going command since ''HMS Surprise'' and is obviously not completely satisfied with shore life.<br />
<br />
The book is closely based on the actual campaign to capture the [[Indian Ocean]] island of [[Mauritius]] and its surrounding islands from the [[France|French]] with O'Brian replacing some of the original participants with his fictional characters. Most of the events in the book are very closely based on historical ones.<br />
<br />
''For more details about the plot, which will contain '''spoilers''', see [[Summary for The Mauritius Command]]'' <br />
<br />
<br />
==The Mauritius campaign in history==<br />
{{spoiler| ''The Mauritius Command''}}<br />
<br />
O'Brian says truly in his foreword that he has adhered closely to the facts of history. No other book in the series retains nearly so much of the real-life course of events; even minor details such as the burning of the silk, the sacrifice of a transport-brig to provide a breakwater during the Réunion landings, Farquhar's propaganda activities and Captain Tomkinson's refusal of the command of the ''Windham'' are faithfully transcribed from the historical record. The principal changes he has allowed himself are as follows:<br />
*[[Jack Aubrey]] replaces Josiah Rowley as [[Commodore (rank)|Commodore]].<br />
*[[Lord Clonfert]] replaces Captain Nesbit Willoughby as [[Master and Commander (rank)|commander]] of the ''Otter'' and subsequently captain of the ''Néréide''. Willoughby was an altogether more robust figure, several of whose exploits are transferred to Jack himself in the book; he was wounded in the same way as Clonfert but recovered and lived to be 72.<br />
*[[Captain Robert Corbett]]'s fate is uncertain. The historian William James mentions the theory that he was killed by his crew but rejects it, suggesting instead that the wounded Corbett threw away his life by tearing off his bandages, a motif which O'Brian transfers to Clonfert.<br />
*Hamelin, the French commodore, was not killed on board the ''Vénus'' but lived until 1839.<br />
<br />
A curious detail is that [[HMS Leopard (ship)|HMS Leopard]] (50) was briefly (April-May 1810) included in the squadron. O'Brian mentions her several times in this book, using the description 'horrible old ''Leopard''' at one point, although he had other and far more extensive plans for her.<br />
<br />
The following chronology of the campaign is based on Vol. 5 of James's ''Naval History of Great Britain''. Following James's convenient practice, the names of British ships are given in roman type and those of foreign vessels (French unless otherwise indicated) in italic.<br />
<br />
*'''1808 Oct. 8''' ''Modeste'' (36) captures ''Jéna'' (18), which becomes HM sloop Victor<br />
*'''1809 Spring''' [[Rodriguez|Rodrigues]] Island captured by [[Harry Keating|Col. Keating]]'s troops for use as base for operations against [[Réunion]] and [[Mauritius]]; ''Vénus'', ''Manche'', ''Bellone'' & ''Caroline'' reach Mauritius<br />
*'''May 31''' ''Caroline'' captures Indiamen Streatham & Europe<br />
*'''Aug. 14''' Otter (N. Willoughby) captures French brig at Rivière-Noire, Mauritius<br />
*'''Sept. 20-23''' [[HMS Raisonable|Raisonable]], Nereide, Sirius & Boadicea, with smaller vessels (Commodore Rowley), working with Keating's forces, capture port of Saint-Paul, Réunion. Silk warehouse burned down (May 22). ''Caroline'' taken; Streatham & Europe recaptured. Suicide of Governor Desbrusleys. Willoughby made [[Post Captain (rank)|post]] and transferred to Nereide.<br />
*'''Nov. 2''' ''Bellone'' recaptures Victor, which apparently retains her new name in French hands<br />
*'''Nov. 18''' ''Vénus'' & ''Manche'' capture Indiamen Windham, United-Kingdom & Charlton<br />
*'''Nov. 22''' ''Bellone'' captures Portuguese ''Minerva'' (henceforward ''Minerve'')<br />
*'''Dec. 29''' Magicienne (L. Curtis) recaptures Windham<br />
*'''1810 Apr. 30''' Nereide's boats successfully raid Jacolet, Mauritius<br />
*'''July 3''' ''Bellone'' & ''Minerve'' capture Indiamen Windham (again) & Ceylon; Boadicea sets out from Rodrigues with Farquhar (Governor-designate) on board<br />
*'''July 6''' Iphigenia (H. Lambert) joins squadron<br />
*'''July 7''' Landings at Grande-Chaloupe & Rivière des Pluies, Réunion (at the latter, transport Ulney is sacrificed to provide breakwater against dangerous surf)<br />
*'''July 8''' French forces on Réunion surrender. Farquhar installed as Governor<br />
*'''Aug. 13''' Boats from Nereide & Iphigenia seize Ile de la Passe at entrance to Grand'Port (O'Brian's 'Port South-East'), Mauritius<br />
*'''Aug. 17-20''' Willoughby leads series of assaults on forts around Mauritius & distributes propaganda leaflets<br />
*'''Aug. 20-25''' Naval action at Grand'Port. Willoughby uses French signals to lure ''Bellone'', ''Minerve'' & ''Victor'' into the harbour. Discarded French flag causes fire in Ile de la Passe battery, disrupting British gunnery. ''Victor'' strikes but then escapes. Boat party from Sirius (S. Pym) recaptures Windham once more (Aug. 21). Sirius & Magicienne run irretrievably aground. Nereide, left unsupported against ''Bellone'' & ''Victor'', strikes after savage battle. Pym, as senior captain, rejects Lambert's plan to board ''Bellone''. Magicienne & then Sirius abandoned & destroyed<br />
*'''Aug. 27''' Survivors of the Grand'Port disaster bring the news to Rowley at Rodrigues<br />
*'''Aug. 27''' Iphigenia captured by ''Astrée'' & ''Manche'' off Ile de la Passe; becomes ''Iphigénie''<br />
*'''Sept. 9''' Africaine (R.Corbett) arrives at Rodrigues<br />
*'''Sept. 12-13''' Africaine, having become separated from Boadicea, engages ''Astrée'' & ''Iphigénie''; strikes after heavy losses. Recaptured by Boadicea, Otter & Staunch<br />
*'''Sept. 17''' HMS Ceylon (32; formerly Bombay [Indiaman] & not to be confused with the Ceylon captured by the French on 3 July) (C. Gordon) taken by ''Vénus'' & ''Victor''<br />
*'''Sept. 18''' Boadicea, her crew reinforced by survivors from Africaine, recovers HMS Ceylon & then captures ''Vénus''<br />
*'''Oct. 19''' Rowley's squadron blockades Port-Louis on W. coast of Mauritius<br />
*'''Nov. 22''' Greatly enlarged squadron - Illustrious (74), 12 frigates & over 50 sloops & transports, now under [[Admiral Bertie|Rear-Adm. Bertie]] - sets sail from Rodrigues<br />
*'''Nov. 29''' Squadron anchors at Grande-Baie near Port-Louis<br />
*'''Dec. 3''' Final surrender of French forces on Mauritius after series of land actions<br />
<br />
<br />
{{AubreyMaturinBooks}}<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin novels|Mauritius Command, The]][[Category:The Mauritius Command]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Blue_at_the_MizzenBlue at the Mizzen2010-03-19T13:58:03Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Format of sub-heading corrected</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Batm-cover-hc.jpg|right|thumb|Cover]]<br />
<br />
'''Blue at the Mizzen''' is the twentieth and last completed volume of the [[Aubrey-Maturin series]], written during 1999 in the rooms at Trinity College, [[Dublin]] ([[Stephen Maturin]]’s alma mater), to which O’Brian retired after the death of his wife.<br />
<br />
''Page references are to the HarperCollins paperback edition.''<br />
<br />
==Plot introduction==<br />
''For more details about the plot, which will contain '''spoilers''', see [[Summary for Blue at the Mizzen]]''<br />
<br />
[[Jack Aubrey]] is in high feather after the successful capture of a [[Turkey|Turkish]] treasure-galley, but there are signs of trouble ahead; his crew disintegrates into riot and desertion at [[Gibraltar]] after the distribution of [[prize money]], a token of the much greater dissolution that must surely follow now that the war is over. First, however, there is the long-delayed mission to [[Chile]], to support the local independence movement under the guise of a hydrographical survey. ''[[HMS Surprise (ship)|Surprise]]'' first returns to [[England]] for refitting and Jack receives a possibly two-edged compliment from a royal personage; then, on the voyage out, she calls at [[Freetown]], where Stephen has a rendezvous of intense personal significance with a most unusual zoologist. Ahead lie a perilous voyage round the [[Cape Horn|Horn]] and a bewildering course amongst the shifting policies and influences of the Chilean revolutionary factions, still further complicated by an unruly subordinate captain. There is no lack of action, and at the end Jack receives a piece of news for which he has been preparing throughout his seagoing life.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Time''' Summer 1816-early 1817.<br />
<br />
==Historical context==<br />
''[[Blue at the Mizzen]]'' ranks only a little behind ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'' as a book that is grounded in actual history. Admiral Lord [[Thomas Cochrane|Cochrane]], whose career had provided a foundation for ''[[Master and Commander (novel)|Master and Commander]]'' and ''[[The Reverse of the Medal]]'', returns to cast a double shadow; on the one hand there is an incipient portrait of him under the name of Sir [[David Lindsay]], and on the other the principal incidents of Chapters 9 and 10 – the [[Valdivia]] action and the capture of the ''[[Esmeralda]]'' – are taken from real exploits achieved by Cochrane in 1817. The dissensions among the Chilean leaders are also founded on fact, although O’Brian seems to have brought them forward in time, partly no doubt to provide a plausible reason for Jack's ultimatum in chapter 10, but also because of the author’s long-standing fascination with the idea of conflicting powers around and behind the throne; in fact [[Bernardo O'Higgins]] and [[San Martín]] (here represented as O'Higgins's supplanter) worked together in the early years of Chilean independence, and it was not until 1823 that a reaction by clericalists and landowners undermined O’Higgins and drove him into exile.<br />
<br />
==Major characters in ''Blue at the Mizzen''==<br />
''(h) : historical''<br />
<br />
*'''[[Jack Aubrey]] (Capt. John Aubrey, RN)''' Post-captain seconded to the Chilean revolutionary junta<br />
*'''Sophia (Sophie) Aubrey''' Wife to Capt. Aubrey<br />
*'''Admiral [[Lord Barmouth]]''' Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet<br />
*'''[[Isobel, Lady Barmouth]]''' Wife to Admiral Lord Barmouth; a childhood friend of Jack Aubrey<br />
*'''[[Miguel Carrera]],''' President of the Chilean Junta (perhaps to be identified with the historical [[José Miguel Carrera Verdugo]], Governor of Chile during the first period of independence (1810-1814)<br />
*'''John Daniel''' Master's mate in ''Surprise'' <br />
*'''[[Austin Dobson]]''' Naturalist and member of the Royal Society (named apparently after the poet Austin Dobson (1840-1921), possibly in honour of his patriotic ballad with the refrain ‘Where are the galleons of Spain?’)<br />
*'''[[Horatio Hanson]]''' First-class volunteer; natural son of HRH the [[Duke of Clarence]]<br />
*'''Lieutenant Harding''' First lieutenant of ''Surprise''<br />
*'''[[Amos Jacob]]''' Jewish jewel-merchant and intelligence agent<br />
*'''[[Preserved Killick]]''' Steward to Capt. Aubrey<br />
*'''Sir David Lindsay''' Former naval officer who has taken service with one of the Chilean revolutionary groups<br />
*'''[[Captain Lodge]]''' Commander of the American frigate ''Delaware''<br />
*'''Dr [[Stephen Maturin]]''' Physician, naturalist and voluntary intelligence agent<br />
*'''Bernardo O'Higgins''' (h) (1778-1842) Chilean revolutionary leader of Irish descent<br />
*'''Colonel Roche''' Guest at Lord Barmouth’s table; an eye-witness of Waterloo<br />
*'''Mr Shepherd''' and '''Mr Store''' Midshipmen in ''Surprise''<br />
*'''Algernon (or Henry) Wantage''' Master's mate in ''Surprise''<br />
*'''[[Christine Wood]], (née [[Heatherleigh]]),''' Naturalist, widow of the Governor of [[Sierra Leone]]<br />
<br />
==Ships of ''Blue at the Mizzen''==<br />
*'''Asp''' Former naval ship-sloop bought and overhauled by Lindsay. (The historical ''Asp'' (16), formerly the French ''Serpent'', was captured in 1808 and sold out of the Navy in 1814)<br />
*'''Delaware''' U.S. naval frigate encountered in the Doldrums (fictional: the name Delaware has been used many times in the U.S. Navy but was in abeyance from 1801 to 1820)<br />
*'''Esmeralda (50)''' Spanish heavy frigate on the Peruvian station (see ''Historical context'' above)<br />
*'''Isaac Newton''' Formerly the Lisbon packet, chartered by a group of Royal Society members for an expedition to South America<br />
*'''[[Ringle]]''' Schooner, used as a tender to ''Surprise''<br />
*'''[[HMS Surprise (ship)|Surprise]] (28)''' French-built former naval sixth-rate, now Jack Aubrey's own property and hired back to the Navy as a survey vessel<br />
<br />
==Themes and motifs==<br />
At first sight ''Blue at the Mizzen'' has rather the look of an elegiac coda, free from major turmoils and echoing earlier and more turbulent themes only in softened form; Jack has reached his goal, Stephen seems to have at least a substantial hope of reaching his, and such fighting as occurs is almost bloodless. However, there are clear signs that O’Brian was already thinking of a further book long before this one was completed. Thus chapter 5 (p.131) refers to the jealousy between Jack’s daughters and [[Brigid Maturin|Brigid]] which is developed at some length in ''[[21]]''.<br />
<br />
Stephen’s courtship of Christine, prefigured in ''[[The Commodore (novel)|The Commodore]]'', is another strand which was clearly destined for further weaving. Here it reads for a while almost as a duplicate of his courtship of Diana in ''HMS Surprise''; he finds his love in an exotic place, is received with joy, offers himself to her and is gently rejected. However, Christine’s refusal is far less clear-cut than Diana’s. Her subsequent visit to England, which appears to develop into a permanent settlement, seems a little contrived (why should she exchange her unchallenged reign among the awantibos and chanting-goshawks for the dampness and conventionality of Dorsetshire society?) and suggests that her interaction with Sophie and the children of Jack and Stephen would have been an important part of her unwritten history. <br />
<br />
Another personal relationship promises more in the way of dramatic tension than it actually achieves. Sir David Lindsay is clearly derived from Lord Cochrane, and his first interview with Jack seems to foreshadow a situation comparable to that of ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', the success of Jack’s operations being imperilled by his flighty and arrogant subordinate. But this interview turns out to be Lindsay’s only appearance on stage; in the next chapter Stephen records that he and Jack have learned to work in harness, and soon afterwards Lindsay is swept away in a duel. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that O’Brian made less of this character than he had initially intended, perhaps because Lindsay’s introduction came too late in the book. In the event a number of exploits which were in reality Cochrane’s are handed over to Jack himself (see ''Historical context'' above). <br />
<br />
As for larger issues, there is a note of dissolution which runs through the entire book. The collapse of discipline after the prize-distribution, which Jack foresees on page 5 (‘But there you are: that is your seaman . . . What he cannot bear is sudden wealth’), and which is quickly verified when the ship is forced to return to Gibraltar, prefigures the greater disintegration that must follow when the Navy is reduced to a peacetime establishment; and this in turn casts a shadow over Jack’s prospects, for as Stephen explains to Jacob (chapter 5, p.128), Jack stands in much greater peril of being ‘yellowed’ now that the demand for good sea-officers has been so much reduced by the end of the war. The theme of disorder and desertion returns in the final pages (chap. 10, p.251), this time as a result of too little money rather than too much (the Chileans have failed to produce any pay for Jack’s men); in other words the old certainties of active service are dissolved, so that good and evil fortune alike bring with them the threat of disintegration.<br />
<br />
The perils of peace (a phrase which might almost have served as a subtitle for the book) are seen from another angle on page 67 (chap.3); an interval of pleasure and tranquillity at Woolcombe is overshadowed by growing problems on and around the estate, for the resumption of imports has affected the demand for home-grown corn, and the humbler farm-workers are suffering as their employers endeavour to cut their losses.<br />
<br />
By way of contrast, chapter 5 also gives us the last of O’Brian’s grand descriptive set-pieces in his account of Christine’s environment on the outskirts of Freetown. Like the Buddhist temple in ''[[The Thirteen-Gun Salute]]'', it is an idealised scene, an earthly paradise, rather than a wholly realistic portrayal – Sierra Leone was reckoned as one of the unhealthiest places in all Africa, and indeed Stephen nearly takes his death there in ''[[The Commodore (novel)|The Commodore]]'' – but one which is given verisimilitude by a number of precise details of fauna and flora, from the giant heron (''Ardea goliath'' actually exists: see [http://www.kenyabirds.org.uk/goliath.htm] ) and the nightjar ''Caprimulgus longipennis'' whose extravagant mating plumage seems to be an ironic comment on the ungainly wooing of Stephen which immediately follows, down to the leeches and mud-skippers.<br />
<br />
Colonel Roche’s description of Waterloo in chapter 1, complete with quotations of two of Wellington’s best-known aphorisms, stands virtually alone in O’Brian’s work as an unmodified slice of historical narrative.<br />
<br />
==An enigma==<br />
‘The fleets bound for both the Indies, East and West, had sailed a little early, because of Nostradamus’ (p.43). From a reference on the next page it is clear beyond doubt that the 16th-century French astrologer Michel de Notre-Dame is meant; but what particular passage in his enigmatic prophecies did O’Brian envisage as having a bearing on the date chosen by merchantmen at Funchal to weigh anchor for their annual trading voyages? It is a historical fact that the summer of 1816 was a particularly poor one; is there perhaps a suggestion that Nostradamus had predicted this (or was deemed to have done so), and that the Funchal traders had set out early so as to avoid the unseasonable storms that this prophecy had led them to expect?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
{{AubreyMaturinBooks}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin novels]][[Category:Blue at the Mizzen]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/HMS_RaisonableHMS Raisonable2010-03-19T13:44:10Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Nelson on board the 'Raisonable'</p>
<hr />
<div>'''HMS Raisonable''' was a 64-gun ship of the third [[rate]], designed by Thomas Slade (who also designed HMS ''Victory'') and completed in 1771. Her name, sometimes given in the more authentically French spelling ''Raisonnable'', derives from a French ship of the same capacity captured in 1762 and wrecked two years later. She was 160ft 1in long on the gundeck, with a beam of 44ft 6in and tonnage reckoned at just over 1385. Her first captain was Maurice Suckling, who brought his twelve-year-old nephew [[Horatio Nelson]] on board as [[midshipman]]. She served in the war of American independence, at the relief of [[Gibraltar]] (1782) and as Commodore Josias Rowley's flagship in the historical [[Mauritius campaign]] of 1808-09. On returning from this commission she was withdrawn from active service, to function as a receiving ship (for accommodation of newly-pressed men) until she was broken up in 1815. Her armaments consisted principally of 24-pounder guns on the lower deck, 18-poounders on the upper and 9-pounders on the [[quarterdeck]].<br />
<br />
{{spoiler|The Mauritius Command}}<br />
<br />
==In the Canon==<br />
<br />
In ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', [[Jack Aubrey]] takes possession of the ''Raisonable'' as his flagship for the campaign to capture [[Mauritius]] and [[Réunion]]; in this he occupies the place of the historical commander of this campaign, Josias Rowley, although in fact Rowley had had the ship as [[Post Captain (rank)|post-captain]] since 1805. ''Raisonable'' is described as an old ship in poor condition and unable to sustain a full broadside; this is in accord with the historical fact that she had not been refitted since 1802 and had had no major repair since 1786. Eventually Jack transfers his flag to the frigate [[HMS Boadicea]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<br />
Winfield, R., ''British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714-1792'' (Seaforth Publishing, 2007), p.100<br />
<br />
[[Category:Historical ships|Raisonable, HMS]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/HMS_Leopard_(ship)HMS Leopard (ship)2010-03-15T17:08:54Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* In the Canon */ Reference in 'The Mauritius Command'</p>
<hr />
<div>'''HMS Leopard''' was a 50-gun ship involved in a serious peacetime incident with the [[USN Chesapeake|''USN Chesapeake'']] in 1807. <br />
<br />
The ''Leopard'' was launched in 1790. As a 50 gun ship, she was already nearly obsolete, being too small to stand in the line of battle and unsuitable as a cruising ship.<br />
<br />
A notable event in her service occurred in early 1807. She was patrolling near the American coast when she encountered the ''Chesapeake'' (Commodore Barron; Captain Gordon) which was six hours out from the Virginia Capes en route to Europe with her decks in a state of clutter. Acting on the orders of his Commander in Chief, Vice Admiral Berkeley, in an attempt to recover British deserters, Captain Salisbury Pryce Humphreys of the "Leopard" sent a boat on board the ''Chesapeake'' and requested permission to search it. Commodore [[James Barron]], refused and began to clear for action. The ''Leopard'' opened fire, killing a number of men and wounding others including the Commodore. The ''Chesapeake'' surrendered, and Humphreys boarded to search for deserters. Three Americans and a British sailor were removed to the "Leopard" and the British sailor was later hanged at [[Halifax]]. The British Government disavowed Vice Admiral Berkeley's actions. The affair was part of the build-up to the [[War of 1812]]. It strained diplomatic relations between the [[United States]] and [[United Kingdom|Britain]].<br />
<br />
In 1811, the ''Leopard'' was converted to a troopship. On June 28, 1814, she was en route from [[England]] to [[Quebec]] when she grounded on [[Anticosti Island]] in heavy fog. The ship was lost but the troops and crew were saved.<br />
<br />
{{spoiler|Desolation Island, The Fortune of War and Letter of Marque}}<br />
<br />
==In the Canon==<br />
<br />
''Leopard'' - "the horrible old ''Leopard''" - first appears in ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', where (as in real life) she takes a minor part in the campaign. Later, in ''[[Desolation Island (novel)|Desolation Island]]'', [[Jack Aubrey]] commands her on a voyage to [[Australia]]. By the end of the voyage in ''[[The Fortune of War]]'' she is in very poor condition having survived near shipwreck. She underwent makeshift repairs on [[Desolation Island (place)|Desolation Island]] but, as Aubrey puts it in [[The Surgeon's Mate (novel)|The Surgeon's Mate]], "the ice had given her frame such a wrench that she could not carry any piece of metal -- no good to man or beast: only fit for a transport." The ship's actual history also causes significant difficulties when negotiating with American whalers for assistance in repairing the rudder. <br />
<br />
Later in ''[[The Letter of Marque (novel)|The Letter of Marque]]'', [[Stephen Maturin]] takes passage to [[Sweden]] aboard the ''Leopard'', now converted to a transport. Again the voyage is eventful with a grounding necessitating the repair of the rudder. However, Maturin is recognised as an old Leopard and treated with respect for the second half of the voyage. <br />
<br />
[[Category:Historical ships|Leopard, HMS]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Caroline_HerschelCaroline Herschel2010-03-02T14:09:19Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Category added</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Caroline Lucretia Herschel''' was a German-born astronomer who spent most of her working life in England. Born in Hanover in a family with a strong musical background, she had herself a great talent as a singer but her early life was dominated by domestic duties. In 1772, however, her brother Friedrich Wilhelm (1738-1822; generally known as Sir William Herschel) took her to England to act as his housekeeper; he had migrated several years previously and had established himself in a respectable musical position in [[Bath]]. William had also developed a passion for astronomy, and Caroline proved to be a dedicated helpmeet in this; during 1773 she worked with Wilhelm on the building of his first reflecting telescope, helping in the casting and polishing of the speculum (concave mirror) - a skill which, in ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', she is represented as passing on to [[Jack Aubrey]]. For some years Caroline also seemed to be developing a career of her own as a concert singer, but after 1778 her work with William absorbed all her attention.<br />
<br />
In 1781 William identified a new heavenly body, soon afterwards recognised as a planet, the first to be added to the solar system since ancient times; it was afterwards named Uranus. This established his reputation as an astronomer, and in the following year he was offered a post by which entailed his moving to Datchet, near the royal residence at Windsor. Caroline accompanied him there and continued to share in his labours; from 1783 onwards she gradually built up a scientific reputation of her own, eventually discovering eight comets as well as making great improvements in the catalogue of stars originally compiled by John Flamsteed. She suffered a blow in 1788 when William's marriage to a wealthy widow robbed her of her place at the head of his household, but eventually she developed a warm relationship with William's son John, himself an outstanding scientist. On William's death Caroline returned to Hanover, but she retained her interest in astronomy and was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1828, followed by honorary membership seven years later. She remained alert and active to the last and was a constant attendant at musical events.<br />
<br />
Caroline Herschel was a small woman who suffered in youth from the disfiguring effects of smallpox as well as typhus fever, but whose correspondence (edited by her niece in 1869) and journals show that she never lost her courage or her sense of humour.<br />
<br />
==In the Canon==<br />
<br />
In Chapter 1 of ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', Jack Aubrey pays enthusiastic tribute to Caroline, who has taught him how to grind the reflector of his telescope and often spends many hours of the night with him in his home-made observatory - much to the discomfiture of [[Sophie Aubrey|Sophie]].<br />
<br />
[[Category:Historical people|Herschel, Caroline]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Caroline_HerschelCaroline Herschel2010-03-02T14:07:33Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Article created</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Caroline Lucretia Herschel''' was a German-born astronomer who spent most of her working life in England. Born in Hanover in a family with a strong musical background, she had herself a great talent as a singer but her early life was dominated by domestic duties. In 1772, however, her brother Friedrich Wilhelm (1738-1822; generally known as Sir William Herschel) took her to England to act as his housekeeper; he had migrated several years previously and had established himself in a respectable musical position in [[Bath]]. William had also developed a passion for astronomy, and Caroline proved to be a dedicated helpmeet in this; during 1773 she worked with Wilhelm on the building of his first reflecting telescope, helping in the casting and polishing of the speculum (concave mirror) - a skill which, in ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', she is represented as passing on to [[Jack Aubrey]]. For some years Caroline also seemed to be developing a career of her own as a concert singer, but after 1778 her work with William absorbed all her attention.<br />
<br />
In 1781 William identified a new heavenly body, soon afterwards recognised as a planet, the first to be added to the solar system since ancient times; it was afterwards named Uranus. This established his reputation as an astronomer, and in the following year he was offered a post by which entailed his moving to Datchet, near the royal residence at Windsor. Caroline accompanied him there and continued to share in his labours; from 1783 onwards she gradually built up a scientific reputation of her own, eventually discovering eight comets as well as making great improvements in the catalogue of stars originally compiled by John Flamsteed. She suffered a blow in 1788 when William's marriage to a wealthy widow robbed her of her place at the head of his household, but eventually she developed a warm relationship with William's son John, himself an outstanding scientist. On William's death Caroline returned to Hanover, but she retained her interest in astronomy and was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1828, followed by honorary membership seven years later. She remained alert and active to the last and was a constant attendant at musical events.<br />
<br />
Caroline Herschel was a small woman who suffered in youth from the disfiguring effects of smallpox as well as typhus fever, but whose correspondence (edited by her niece in 1869) and journals show that she never lost her courage or her sense of humour.<br />
<br />
==In the Canon==<br />
<br />
In Chapter 1 of ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', Jack Aubrey pays enthusiastic tribute to Caroline, who has taught him how to grind the reflector of his telescope and often spends many hours of the night with him in his home-made observatory - much to the discomfiture of [[Sophie Aubrey|Sophie]].</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/HMS_RaisonableHMS Raisonable2010-03-02T13:31:02Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* References */ Page ref. added</p>
<hr />
<div>'''HMS Raisonable''' was a 64-gun ship of the third [[rate]], designed by Thomas Slade (who also designed HMS ''Victory'') and completed in 1771. Her name, sometimes given in the more authentically French spelling ''Raisonnable'', derives from a French ship of the same capacity captured in 1762 and wrecked two years later. She was 160ft 1in long on the gundeck, with a beam of 44ft 6in and tonnage reckoned at just over 1385. Her first captain was Maurice Suckling, uncle of [[Horatio Nelson|Nelson]]. She served in the war of American independence, at the relief of [[Gibraltar]] (1782) and as Commodore Josias Rowley's flagship in the historical [[Mauritius]] campaign of 1808-09. On returning from this commission she was withdrawn from active service, to function as a receiving ship (for accommodation of newly-pressed men) until she was broken up in 1815. Her armaments consisted principally of 24-pounder guns on the lower deck, 18-poounders on the upper and 9-pounders on the [[quarterdeck]].<br />
<br />
{{spoiler|The Mauritius Command}}<br />
<br />
==In the Canon==<br />
<br />
In ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', [[Jack Aubrey]] takes possession of the ''Raisonable'' as his flagship for the campaign to capture [[Mauritius]] and [[Réunion]]; in this he occupies the place of the historical commander of this campaign, Josias Rowley, although in fact Rowley had had the ship as [[Post Captain (rank)|post-captain]] since 1805. ''Raisonable'' is described as an old ship in poor condition and unable to sustain a full broadside; this is in accord with the historical fact that she had not been refitted since 1802 and had had no major repair since 1786. Eventually Jack transfers his flag to the frigate [[HMS Boadicea]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<br />
Winfield, R., ''British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714-1792'' (Seaforth Publishing, 2007), p.100<br />
<br />
[[Category:Historical ships|Raisonable, HMS]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/HMS_RaisonableHMS Raisonable2010-03-02T13:30:16Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Dimensions added</p>
<hr />
<div>'''HMS Raisonable''' was a 64-gun ship of the third [[rate]], designed by Thomas Slade (who also designed HMS ''Victory'') and completed in 1771. Her name, sometimes given in the more authentically French spelling ''Raisonnable'', derives from a French ship of the same capacity captured in 1762 and wrecked two years later. She was 160ft 1in long on the gundeck, with a beam of 44ft 6in and tonnage reckoned at just over 1385. Her first captain was Maurice Suckling, uncle of [[Horatio Nelson|Nelson]]. She served in the war of American independence, at the relief of [[Gibraltar]] (1782) and as Commodore Josias Rowley's flagship in the historical [[Mauritius]] campaign of 1808-09. On returning from this commission she was withdrawn from active service, to function as a receiving ship (for accommodation of newly-pressed men) until she was broken up in 1815. Her armaments consisted principally of 24-pounder guns on the lower deck, 18-poounders on the upper and 9-pounders on the [[quarterdeck]].<br />
<br />
{{spoiler|The Mauritius Command}}<br />
<br />
==In the Canon==<br />
<br />
In ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', [[Jack Aubrey]] takes possession of the ''Raisonable'' as his flagship for the campaign to capture [[Mauritius]] and [[Réunion]]; in this he occupies the place of the historical commander of this campaign, Josias Rowley, although in fact Rowley had had the ship as [[Post Captain (rank)|post-captain]] since 1805. ''Raisonable'' is described as an old ship in poor condition and unable to sustain a full broadside; this is in accord with the historical fact that she had not been refitted since 1802 and had had no major repair since 1786. Eventually Jack transfers his flag to the frigate [[HMS Boadicea]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<br />
Winfield, R., ''British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714-1792'' (Seaforth Publishing, 2007)<br />
<br />
[[Category:Historical ships|Raisonable, HMS]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/The_Mauritius_CommandThe Mauritius Command2010-02-26T17:41:12Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* The Mauritius campaign in history */ Correction re 'Leopard'</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Tmc-cover-hc.jpg|right|thumb|Cover]]'''The Mauritius Command''' is the fourth book in the [[Aubrey-Maturin series]]. It starts a number of years after the events of the novel ''[[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]]''. The book opens with scenes of Aubrey's domestic life at [[Ashgrove Cottage]]. Aubrey has been without a sea-going command since ''HMS Surprise'' and is obviously not completely satisfied with shore life.<br />
<br />
The book is closely based on the actual campaign to capture the [[Indian Ocean]] island of [[Mauritius]] and its surrounding islands from the [[France|French]] with O'Brian replacing some of the original participants with his fictional characters. Most of the events in the book are very closely based on historical ones.<br />
<br />
''For more details about the plot, which will contain '''spoilers''', see [[Summary for The Mauritius Command]]'' <br />
<br />
<br />
==The Mauritius campaign in history==<br />
{{spoiler| ''The Mauritius Command''}}<br />
<br />
O'Brian says truly in his foreword that he has adhered closely to the facts of history. No other book in the series retains nearly so much of the real-life course of events; even minor details such as the burning of the silk, the sacrifice of a transport-brig to provide a breakwater during the Réunion landings, Farquhar's propaganda activities and Captain Tomkinson's refusal of the command of the ''Windham'' are faithfully transcribed from the historical record. The principal changes he has allowed himself are as follows:<br />
*[[Jack Aubrey]] replaces Josiah Rowley as [[Commodore (rank)|Commodore]].<br />
*[[Lord Clonfert]] replaces Captain Nesbit Willoughby as [[Master and Commander (rank)|commander]] of the ''Otter'' and subsequently captain of the ''Néréide''. Willoughby was an altogether more robust figure, several of whose exploits are transferred to Jack himself in the book; he was wounded in the same way as Clonfert but recovered and lived to be 72.<br />
*[[Captain Robert Corbett]]'s fate is uncertain. The historian William James mentions the theory that he was killed by his crew but rejects it, suggesting instead that the wounded Corbett threw away his life by tearing off his bandages, a motif which O'Brian transfers to Clonfert.<br />
*Hamelin, the French commodore, was not killed on board the ''Vénus'' but lived until 1839.<br />
<br />
A curious detail is that [[HMS Leopard (ship)|HMS Leopard]] (50) was briefly (April-May 1810) included in the squadron. O'Brian mentions her several times in this book, using the description 'horrible old ''Leopard''' at one point, although he had other and far more extensive plans for her.<br />
<br />
The following chronology of the campaign is based on Vol. 5 of James's ''Naval History of Great Britain''. Following James's convenient practice, the names of British ships are given in roman type and those of foreign vessels (French unless otherwise indicated) in italic.<br />
<br />
*'''1808 Oct. 8''' ''Modeste'' (36) captures ''Jéna'' (18), which becomes ''HM sloop Victor''<br />
*'''1809 Spring''' [[Rodriguez|Rodrigues]] Island captured by [[Harry Keating|Col. Keating]]'s troops for use as base for operations against [[Réunion]] and [[Mauritius]]; ''Vénus'', ''Manche'', ''Bellone'' & ''Caroline'' reach Mauritius<br />
*'''May 31''' ''Caroline'' captures Indiamen Streatham & Europe<br />
*'''Aug. 14''' ''Otter'' (N. Willoughby) captures French brig at Rivière-Noire, Mauritius<br />
*'''Sept. 20-23''' ''Raisonable'', ''Nereide'', ''Sirius'' & ''Boadicea'', with smaller vessels (Commodore Rowley), working with Keating's forces, capture port of Saint-Paul, Réunion. Silk warehouse burned down (May 22). ''Caroline'' taken; ''Streatham'' & ''Europe'' recaptured. Suicide of Governor Desbrusleys. Willoughby made [[Post Captain (rank)|post]] and transferred to ''Nereide''.<br />
*'''Nov. 2''' ''Bellone'' recaptures ''Victor'', which apparently retains her new name in French hands<br />
*'''Nov. 18''' ''Vénus'' & ''Manche'' capture Indiamen ''Windham'', ''United-Kingdom'' & ''Charlton''<br />
*'''Nov. 22''' ''Bellone'' captures Portuguese ''Minerva'' (henceforward ''Minerve'')<br />
*'''Dec. 29''' ''Magicienne'' (L. Curtis) recaptures ''Windham''<br />
*'''1810 Apr. 30''' ''Nereide's'' boats successfully raid Jacolet, Mauritius<br />
*'''July 3''' ''Bellone'' & ''Minerve'' capture Indiamen ''Windham'' (again) & ''Ceylon''; ''Boadicea'' sets out from Rodrigues with Farquhar (Governor-designate) on board<br />
*'''July 6''' ''Iphigenia'' (H. Lambert) joins squadron<br />
*'''July 7''' Landings at Grande-Chaloupe & Rivière des Pluies, Réunion (at the latter, transport ''Ulney'' is sacrificed to provide breakwater against dangerous surf)<br />
*'''July 8''' French forces on Réunion surrender. Farquhar installed as Governor<br />
*'''Aug. 13''' Boats from ''Nereide'' & ''Iphigenia'' seize Ile de la Passe at entrance to Grand'Port (O'Brian's 'Port South-East'), Mauritius<br />
*'''Aug. 17-20''' Willoughby leads series of assaults on forts around Mauritius & distributes propaganda leaflets<br />
*'''Aug. 20-25''' Naval action at Grand'Port. Willoughby uses French signals to lure ''Bellone'', ''Minerve'' & ''Victor'' into the harbour. Discarded French flag causes fire in Ile de la Passe battery, disrupting British gunnery. ''Victor'' strikes but then escapes. Boat party from ''Sirius'' (S. Pym) recaptures ''Windham'' once more (Aug. 21). ''Sirius'' & ''Magicienne'' run irretrievably aground. ''Nereide'', left unsupported against ''Bellone'' & ''Victor'', strikes after savage battle. Pym, as senior captain, rejects Lambert's plan to board ''Bellone''. ''Magicienne'' & then ''Sirius'' abandoned & destroyed<br />
*'''Aug. 27''' Survivors of the Grand'Port disaster bring the news to Rowley at Rodrigues<br />
*'''Aug. 27''' ''Iphigenia'' captured by ''Astrée'' & ''Manche'' off Ile de la Passe; becomes ''Iphigénie''<br />
*'''Sept. 9''' ''Africaine'' (R.Corbett) arrives at Rodrigues<br />
*'''Sept. 12-13''' ''Africaine'', having become separated from ''Boadicea'', engages ''Astrée'' & ''Iphigénie''; strikes after heavy losses. Recaptured by ''Boadicea'', ''Otter'' & ''Staunch''<br />
*'''Sept. 17''' ''HMS Ceylon'' (32; formerly Bombay [Indiaman] & not to be confused with the ''Ceylon'' captured by the French on 3 July) (C. Gordon) taken by ''Vénus'' & ''Victor''<br />
*'''Sept. 18''' ''Boadicea'', her crew reinforced by survivors from ''Africaine'', recovers ''HMS Ceylon'' & then captures ''Vénus''<br />
*'''Oct. 19''' Rowley's squadron blockades Port-Louis on W. coast of Mauritius<br />
*'''Nov. 22''' Greatly enlarged squadron - ''Illustrious'' (74), 12 frigates & over 50 sloops & transports, now under [[Admiral Bertie|Rear-Adm. Bertie]] - sets sail from Rodrigues<br />
*'''Nov. 29''' Squadron anchors at Grande-Baie near Port-Louis<br />
*'''Dec. 3''' Final surrender of French forces on Mauritius after series of land actions<br />
<br />
<br />
{{AubreyMaturinBooks}}<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin novels|Mauritius Command, The]][[Category:The Mauritius Command]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/HMS_RaisonableHMS Raisonable2010-02-26T17:39:23Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Reference added</p>
<hr />
<div>'''HMS Raisonable''' was a 64-gun ship of the third [[rate]], designed by Thomas Slade (who also designed HMS ''Victory'') and completed in 1770. Her name, sometimes given in the more authentically French spelling ''Raisonnable'', derives from a French ship of the same capacity captured in 1762 and wrecked two years later. She served in the war of American independence, at the relief of [[Gibraltar]] (1782) and as Commodore Josias Rowley's flagship in the historical [[Mauritius]] campaign of 1808-09. On returning from this commission she was withdrawn from active service, to function as a receiving ship (for accommodation of newly-pressed men) until she was broken up in 1817. Her armaments consisted principally of 24-pounder guns on the lower deck, 18-poounders on the upper and 9-pounders on the [[quarterdeck]].<br />
<br />
{{spoiler|The Mauritius Command}}<br />
<br />
==In the Canon==<br />
<br />
In ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', [[Jack Aubrey]] takes possession of the ''Raisonable'' as his flagship for the campaign to capture [[Mauritius]] and [[Réunion]]; in this he occupies the place of the historical commander of this campaign, Josias Rowley, although in fact Rowley had had the ship as [[Post Captain (rank)|post-captain]] since 1805. ''Raisonable'' is described as an old ship in poor condition and unable to sustain a full broadside; this is in accord with the historical fact that she had not been refitted since 1802 and had had no major repair since 1786. Eventually Jack transfers his flag to the frigate [[HMS Boadicea]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<br />
Winfield, R., ''British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714-1792'' (Seaforth Publishing, 2007)<br />
<br />
[[Category:Historical ships|Raisonable, HMS]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/HMS_RaisonableHMS Raisonable2010-02-26T17:32:58Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Article created</p>
<hr />
<div>'''HMS Raisonable''' was a 64-gun ship of the third rate, designed by Thomas Slade (who also designed HMS ''Victory'') and completed in 1770. Her name, sometimes given in the more authentically French spelling ''Raisonnable'', derives from a French ship of the same capacity captured in 1762 and wrecked two years later. She served in the war of American independence, at the relief of [[Gibraltar]] (1782) and as Commodore Josias Rowley's flagship in the historical [[Mauritius]] campaign of 1808-09. On returning from this commission she was withdrawn from active service, to function as a receiving ship (for accommodation of newly-pressed men) until she was broken up in 1817. Her armaments consisted principally of 24-pounder guns on the lower deck, 18-poounders on the upper and 9-pounders on the [[quarterdeck]].<br />
<br />
{{spoiler|The Mauritius Command}}<br />
<br />
==In the Canon==<br />
<br />
In ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', [[Jack Aubrey]] takes possession of the ''Raisonable'' as his flagship for the campaign to capture [[Mauritius]] and [[Réunion]]; in this he occupies the place of the historical commander of this campaign, Josias Rowley, although in fact Rowley had had the ship as [[Post Captain (rank)|post-captain]] since 1805. Raisonable is described as an old ship in poor condition and unable to sustain a full broadside; this is in accord with the historical fact that she had not been refitted since 1802 and had no major repair since 1786. Eventually Jack transfers his flag to the frigate [[HMS Boadicea]].<br />
<br />
[[Category:Historical ships|Raisonable, HMS]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Charles-Maurice_de_TalleyrandCharles-Maurice de Talleyrand2009-09-22T16:52:31Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Spelling correction</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord''', sometime Bishop of Autun and (from 1806) sovereign Prince of Benevento, was a [[France|French]] diplomat, government minister and political manipulator. Born to a noble but somewhat impoverished family in February 1754, he was disqualified by a club-foot (the result of an accident in babyhood) for a military career, and his parents - keeping him at a distance - destined him for the Church. He was ordained in 1779 and rose to the Bishopric of Autun ten years later; but his ready adherence to the revolutionary party, on whose behalf he took a lead in the confiscation of Church property by the State, earned him excommunication and compelled him to resign his office in 1791.<br />
<br />
In 1792 Talleyrand found his métier as a diplomat, visiting [[London]] in order to sound out British attitudes to the French Revolution. (According to O'Brian in ''[[The Surgeon's Mate (novel)|The Surgeon's Mate]]'', [[Stephen Maturin]] was in London at the time and met Talleyrand or at least some members of his staff.) Later that year he returned as an exile, having been detected in a clandestine correspondence with the Comte de Provence who afterwards became King Louis XVIII of France. This kind of opportunistic double-dealing would remain characteristic of him. After a spell in the United States, Talleyrand was rehabilitated in 1796. He became an early supporter of [[Napoleon]], whose seizure of power in 1799 owed much to Talleyrand's machinations. Talleyrand was now appointed Minister of External Relations, a post which he held until 1807; as such he was largely responsible for the negotiations which followed Napoleon's great victories of the period. While capable of gross flattery towards his master, Talleyrand was by no means an uncritical admirer; he tried to resist the humiliation of Austria, the dismemberment of Prussia and the drastic interference in [[Spain|Spanish]] affairs which set Napoleon's brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. (Napoleon cynically entrusted the displaced Spanish royal family to Talleyrand's care at his own château of [[Valençay]] - effectively making him their gaoler.) At the Congress of Erfurt (September 1808), Talleyrand worked behind Napoleon's back to harden Tsar Alexander I's previously complaisant attitude towards Napoleon. In January 1809 the breach between the Emperor and his Grand Chamberlain (as Talleyrand now was) became open; warned by messages from his mother and stepson, Napoleon rushed back from Burgos in Spain to call Talleyrand to account and berated him for half an hour in front of a group of ministers and court officials, calling him a thief, a coward, a man who would sell his own father and finally 'a silk stocking full of s**t'. Talleyrand escaped any further penalties than the loss of his post as chamberlain, but he was never afterwards in Napoleon's confidence, and within weeks we find him revealing French war plans to the Austrian ambassador Metternich; he afterwards trafficked with Russia and Britain on similar terms, sometimes plainly demanding large sums of money in return. Thus the scene was set for Talleyrand's open change of side at Napoleon's first abdication in 1814.<br />
<br />
During the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X (1815-30) Talleyrand took little part in public affairs, devoting himself to sensual pleasures (his amours had been notorious even during his clerical days) and to the composition of his Memoirs. Under Louis-Philippe, however, he served as French Ambassador in London (1830-34). He died at Valençay on 17 May 1838.<br />
<br />
Talleyrand was for some years the owner of Château [[Haut-Brion]], home of one of [[Jack Aubrey]]'s favourite wines.<br />
<br />
===In the Canon===<br />
{{spoiler|The Surgeon's Mate}}<br />
<br />
''Page references are to the HarperCollins paperback (1996)''<br />
<br />
Chapter 5, p.141: "'Prodigious,' said Stephen. 'And yet in a way one might say that the whole of life is a tissue of prodigious coincidences: as for example that at the very moment we attempt to cross the road this particular coach and six should come by; yet though extremely unlikely it is a fact. And the glabrous face within belongs to Monsieur de Talleyrand-Périgord.' Stephen took off his hat; the glabrous face returned his bow."<br />
<br />
Chapter 11, p. 357 et seqq.: [ [[Duhamel]], the agent who has conducted Jack, Stephen and [[Jagiello]] to the [[Temple]], now makes a veiled proposition to Stephen - freedom as reward for the undertaking of a secret mission. He mentions [[Diana Villiers|Diana]]'s great diamond, which she has sold to purchase Stephen's release. He does not name his principal but, in a 'perhaps calculated indiscretion', mentions Valençay.]<br />
<br />
Page 372: "'You will not remember me, Dr Maturin,' said the first man, advancing. 'D'Anglars: I had the honour of meeting you when I was attached to the suite of Monsieur de Talleyrand-Périgord during his embassy to London [ . . . ]'<br />
<br />
"'I remember you perfectly, sir,' said Stephen [ . . . ] Stephen did have an affectionate admiration for the Bishop of Autun, or the Prince de Bénévent as he was now styled: a pillar of falsehood, a prodigy, a phoenix of duplicity, but excellent company, and by a certain standard quite sound."<br />
<br />
[[Category:historical people]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Charles-Maurice_de_TalleyrandCharles-Maurice de Talleyrand2009-08-28T12:38:27Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Talleyrand in 'Surgeon's Mate'</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord''', sometime Bishop of Autun and (from 1806) sovereign Prince of Benevento, was a [[France|French]] diplomat, government minister and political manipulator. Born to a noble but somewhat impoverished family in February 1754, he was disqualified by a club-foot (the result of an accident in babyhood) for a military career, and his parents - keeping him at a distance - destined him for the Church. He was ordained in 1779 and rose to the Bishopric of Autun ten years later; but his ready adherence to the revolutionary party, on whose behalf he took a lead in the confiscation of Church property by the State, earned him excommunication and compelled him to resign his office in 1791.<br />
<br />
In 1792 Talleyrand found his métier as a diplomat, visiting [[London]] in order to sound out British attitudes to the French Revolution. (According to O'Brian in ''[[The Surgeon's Mate (novel)|The Surgeon's Mate]]'', [[Stephen Maturin]] was in London at the time and met Talleyrand or at least some members of his staff.) Later that year he returned as an exile, having been detected in a clandestine correspondence with the Comte de Provence who afterwards became King Louis XVIII of France. This kind of opportunistic double-dealing would remain characteristic of him. After a spell in the United States, Talleyrand was rehabilitated in 1796. He became an early supporter of [[Napoleon]], whose seizure of power in 1799 owed much to Talleyrand's machinations. Talleyrand was now appointed Minister of External Relations, a post which he held until 1807; as such he was largely responsible for the negotiations which followed Napoleon's great victories of the period. While capable of gross flattery towards his master, Talleyrand was by no means an uncritical admirer; he tried to resist the humiliation of Austria, the dismemberment of Prussia and the drastic interference in [[Spain|Spanish]] affairs which set Napoleon's brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. (Napoleon cynically entrusted the displaced Spanish royal family to Talleyrand's care at his own château of [[Valençay]] - effectively making him their gaoler.) At the Congress of Erfurt (September 1808), Talleyrand worked behind Napoleon's back to harden Tsar Alexander I's previously complaisant attitude towards Napoleon. In January 1809 the breach between the Emperor and his Grand Chamberlain (as Talleyrand now was) became open; warned by messages from his mother and stepson, Napoleon rushed back from Burgos in Spain to call Talleyrand to account and berated him for half an hour in front of a group of ministers and court officials, calling him a thief, a coward, a man who would sell his own father and finally 'a silk stocking full of s**t'. Talleyrand escaped any further penalties than the loss of his post as chamberlain, but he was never afterwards in Napoleon's confidence, and within weeks we find him revealing French war plans to the Austrian ambassador Metternich; he afterwards trafficked with Russia and Britain on similar terms, sometimes plainly demanding large sums of nomey in return. Thus the scene was set for Talleyrand's open change of side at Napoleon's first abdication in 1814.<br />
<br />
During the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X (1815-30) Talleyrand took little part in public affairs, devoting himself to sensual pleasures (his amours had been notorious even during his clerical days) and to the composition of his Memoirs. Under Louis-Philippe, however, he served as French Ambassador in London (1830-34). He died at Valençay on 17 May 1838.<br />
<br />
Talleyrand was for some years the owner of Château [[Haut-Brion]], home of one of [[Jack Aubrey]]'s favourite wines.<br />
<br />
===In the Canon===<br />
{{spoiler|The Surgeon's Mate}}<br />
<br />
''Page references are to the HarperCollins paperback (1996)''<br />
<br />
Chapter 5, p.141: "'Prodigious,' said Stephen. 'And yet in a way one might say that the whole of life is a tissue of prodigious coincidences: as for example that at the very moment we attempt to cross the road this particular coach and six should come by; yet though extremely unlikely it is a fact. And the glabrous face within belongs to Monsieur de Talleyrand-Périgord.' Stephen took off his hat; the glabrous face returned his bow."<br />
<br />
Chapter 11, p. 357 et seqq.: [ [[Duhamel]], the agent who has conducted Jack, Stephen and [[Jagiello]] to the [[Temple]], now makes a veiled proposition to Stephen - freedom as reward for the undertaking of a secret mission. He mentions [[Diana Villiers|Diana]]'s great diamond, which she has sold to purchase Stephen's release. He does not name his principal but, in a 'perhaps calculated indiscretion', mentions Valençay.]<br />
<br />
Page 372: "'You will not remember me, Dr Maturin,' said the first man, advancing. 'D'Anglars: I had the honour of meeting you when I was attached to the suite of Monsieur de Talleyrand-Périgord during his embassy to London [ . . . ]'<br />
<br />
"'I remember you perfectly, sir,' said Stephen [ . . . ] Stephen did have an affectionate admiration for the Bishop of Autun, or the Prince de Bénévent as he was now styled: a pillar of falsehood, a prodigy, a phoenix of duplicity, but excellent company, and by a certain standard quite sound."<br />
<br />
[[Category:historical people]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Charles-Maurice_de_TalleyrandCharles-Maurice de Talleyrand2009-08-28T12:09:18Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Further details</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord''', sometime Bishop of Autun and (from 1806) sovereign Prince of Benevento, was a [[France|French]] diplomat, government minister and political manipulator. Born to a noble but somewhat impoverished family in February 1754, he was disqualified by a club-foot (the result of an accident in babyhood) for a military career), and his parents - keeping him at a distance - destined him for the Church. He was ordained in 1779 and rose to the Bishopric of Autun ten years later; but his ready adherence to the revolutionary party, on whose behalf he took a lead in the confiscation of Church property by the State, earned him excommunication and compelled him to resign his office in 1791.<br />
<br />
In 1792 Talleyrand found his métier as a diplomat, visiting [[London]] in order to sound out British attitudes to the French Revolution. (According to O'Brian in ''[[The Surgeon's Mate (novel)|The Surgeon's Mate]]'', [[Stephen Maturin]] met Talleyrand during this visit.) Later that year he returned as an exile, having been detected in a clandestine correspondence with the Comte de Provence who afterwards became King Louis XVIII of France. This kind of opportunistic double-dealing would remain characteristic of him. After a spell in the United States, Talleyrand was rehabilitated in 1796. He became an early supporter of [[Napoleon]], whose seizure of power in 1799 owed much to Talleyrand's machinations. Talleyrand was now appointed Minister of External Relations, a post which he held until 1807; as such he was largely responsible for the negotiations which followed Napoleon's great victories of the period. While capable of gross flattery towards his master, Talleyrand was by no means an uncritical admirer; he tried to resist the humiliation of Austria, the dismemberment of Prussia and the drastic interference in [[Spain|Spanish]] affairs which set Napoleon's brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. (Napoleon cynically entrusted the displaced Spanish royal family to Talleyrand's care at his own château of [[Valençay]] - effectively making him their gaoler.) At the Congress of Erfurt (September 1808), Talleyrand worked behind Napoleon's back to harden Tsar Alexander I's previously complaisant attitude towards Napoleon. In January 1809 the breach between the Emperor and his Grand Chamberlain (as Talleyrand now was) became so deep that Napoleon rushed back from Burgos in Spain to call Talleyrand to account and berated him for half an hour in front of a group of ministers and court officials, calling him a thief, a coward, a man who would sell his own father and finally 'a silk stocking full of s**t'. Talleyrand escaped any further penalties than the loss of his post as chamberlain, but he was never afterwards in Napoleon's confidence, and within weeks we find him revealing French war plans to the Austrian ambassador Metternich; he afterwards trafficked with Russia and Britain on similar terms, sometimes plainly demanding large sums of nomey in return. Thus the scene was set for Talleyrand's open change of side at Napoleon's first abdication in 1814.<br />
<br />
During the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X (1815-30) Talleyrand took little part in public affairs, devoting himself to sensual pleasures (his amours had been notorious even during his clerical days) and to the composition of his Memoirs. Under Louis-Philippe, however, he served as French Ambassador in London (1830-34). He died at Valençay on 17 May 1838.<br />
<br />
Talleyrand was for some years the owner of Château [[Haut-Brion]], home of one of [[Jack Aubrey]]'s favourite wines.<br />
<br />
===In the Canon===<br />
''[To be continued]''<br />
<br />
[[Category:historical people]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Charles-Maurice_de_TalleyrandCharles-Maurice de Talleyrand2009-08-27T17:05:49Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Spelling correction</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord''', sometime Bishop of Autun and (from 1806) sovereign Prince of Benevento, was a [[France|French]] diplomat, government minister and political manipulator. Born to a noble but somewhat impoverished family in February 1754, he was disqualified by a club-foot (the result of an accident in babyhood) for a military career), and his parents - keeping him at a distance - destined him for the Church. He was ordained in 1779 and rose to the Bishopric of Autun ten years later; but his ready adherence to the revolutionary party, on whose behalf he took a lead in the confiscation of Church property by the State, earned him excommunication and compelled him to resign his office in 1791.<br />
<br />
In 1792 Talleyrand found his métier as a diplomat, visiting [[London]] in order to sound out British attitudes to the French Revolution. (According to O'Brian in ''[[The Surgeon's Mate (novel)|The Surgeon's Mate]]'', [[Stephen Maturin]] met Talleyrand during this visit.) Later that year he returned as an exile, having been detected in a clandestine correspondence with the Comte de Provence who afterwards became King Louis XVIII of France. This kind of opportunistic double-dealing would remain characteristic of him. After a spell in the United States, Talleyrand was rehabilitated in 1796. He became an early supporter of [[Napoleon]], whose seizure of power in 1799 owed much to Talleyrand's machinations. Talleyrand was now appointed Minister of External Relations, a post which he held until 1807; as such he was largely responsible for the negotiations which followed Napoleon's great victories of the period. While capable of gross flattery towards his master, Talleyrand was by no means an uncritical admirer; he tried to resist the humiliation of Austria, the dismemberment of Prussia and the drastic interference in [[Spain|Spanish]] affairs which set Napoleon's brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. (Napoleon cynically entrusted the displaced Spanish royal family to Talleyrand's care at his own château of [[Valençay]] - effectively making him their gaoler.) At the Congress of Erfurt (September 1808), Talleyrand worked behind Napoleon's back to harden Tsar Alexander I's previously complaisant attitude towards Napoleon. The breach between the Emperor and his Grand Chamberlain (as Talleyrand now was) became so deep that Napoleon called him 's**t in silk stockings' and once berated him in front of a group of military marshals. Thus the scene was set for Talleyrand's open change of side at Napoleon's first abdication in 1814.<br />
<br />
During the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X (1815-30) Talleyrand took little part in public affairs, devoting himself to sensual pleasures (his amours had been notorious even during his clerical days) and to the composition of his Memoirs. Under Louis-Philippe, however, he served as French Ambassador in London (1830-34). He died at Valençay on 17 May 1838.<br />
<br />
Talleyrand was for some years the owner of Château [[Haut-Brion]], home of one of [[Jack Aubrey]]'s favourite wines.<br />
<br />
===In the Canon===<br />
''[To be continued]''<br />
<br />
[[Category:historical people]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Charles-Maurice_de_TalleyrandCharles-Maurice de Talleyrand2009-08-27T17:05:21Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Article continued - II</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord''', sometime Bishop of Autun and (from 1806) sovereign Prince of Benevento, was a [[France|French]] diplomat, goverment minister and political manipulator. Born to a noble but somewhat impoverished family in February 1754, he was disqualified by a club-foot (the result of an accident in babyhood) for a military career), and his parents - keeping him at a distance - destined him for the Church. He was ordained in 1779 and rose to the Bishopric of Autun ten years later; but his ready adherence to the revolutionary party, on whose behalf he took a lead in the confiscation of Church property by the State, earned him excommunication and compelled him to resign his office in 1791.<br />
<br />
In 1792 Talleyrand found his métier as a diplomat, visiting [[London]] in order to sound out British attitudes to the French Revolution. (According to O'Brian in ''[[The Surgeon's Mate (novel)|The Surgeon's Mate]]'', [[Stephen Maturin]] met Talleyrand during this visit.) Later that year he returned as an exile, having been detected in a clandestine correspondence with the Comte de Provence who afterwards became King Louis XVIII of France. This kind of opportunistic double-dealing would remain characteristic of him. After a spell in the United States, Talleyrand was rehabilitated in 1796. He became an early supporter of [[Napoleon]], whose seizure of power in 1799 owed much to Talleyrand's machinations. Talleyrand was now appointed Minister of External Relations, a post which he held until 1807; as such he was largely responsible for the negotiations which followed Napoleon's great victories of the period. While capable of gross flattery towards his master, Talleyrand was by no means an uncritical admirer; he tried to resist the humiliation of Austria, the dismemberment of Prussia and the drastic interference in [[Spain|Spanish]] affairs which set Napoleon's brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. (Napoleon cynically entrusted the displaced Spanish royal family to Talleyrand's care at his own château of [[Valençay]] - effectively making him their gaoler.) At the Congress of Erfurt (September 1808), Talleyrand worked behind Napoleon's back to harden Tsar Alexander I's previously complaisant attitude towards Napoleon. The breach between the Emperor and his Grand Chamberlain (as Talleyrand now was) became so deep that Napoleon called him 's**t in silk stockings' and once berated him in front of a group of military marshals. Thus the scene was set for Talleyrand's open change of side at Napoleon's first abdication in 1814.<br />
<br />
During the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X (1815-30) Talleyrand took little part in public affairs, devoting himself to sensual pleasures (his amours had been notorious even during his clerical days) and to the composition of his Memoirs. Under Louis-Philippe, however, he served as French Ambassador in London (1830-34). He died at Valençay on 17 May 1838.<br />
<br />
Talleyrand was for some years the owner of Château [[Haut-Brion]], home of one of [[Jack Aubrey]]'s favourite wines.<br />
<br />
===In the Canon===<br />
''[To be continued]''<br />
<br />
[[Category:historical people]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Charles-Maurice_de_TalleyrandCharles-Maurice de Talleyrand2009-08-27T16:59:18Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Article continued</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord''', sometime Bishop of Autun and (from 1806) sovereign Prince of Benevento, was a [[France|French]] diplomat, goverment minister and political manipulator. Born to a noble but somewhat impoverished family in February 1754, he was disqualified by a club-foot (the result of an accident in babyhood) for a military career), and his parents - keeping him at a distance - destined him for the Church. He was ordained in 1779 and rose to the Bishopric of Autun ten years later; but his ready adherence to the revolutionary party, on whose behalf he took a lead in the confiscation of Church property by the State, earned him excommunication and compelled him to resign his office in 1791.<br />
<br />
In 1792 Talleyrand found his métier as a diplomat, visiting [[London]] in order to sound out British attitudes to the French Revolution. (According to O'Brian in ''[[The Surgeon's Mate (novel)|The Surgeon's Mate]]'', [[Stephen Maturin]] met Talleyrand during this visit.) Later that year he returned as an exile, having been detected in a clandestine correspondence with the Comte de Provence who afterwards became King Louis XVIII of France. This kind of opportunistic double-dealing would remain characteristic of him. After a spell in the United States, Talleyrand was rehabilitated in 1796. He became an early supporter of [[Napoleon]], whose seizure of power in 1799 owed much to Talleyrand's machinations. Talleyrand was now appointed Minister of External Relations, a post which he held until 1807; as such he was largely responsible for the negotiations which followed Napoleon's great victories of the period. While capable of gross flattery towards his master, Talleyrand was by no means an uncritical admirer; he tried to resist the humiliation of Austria, the dismemberment of Prussia and the drastic interference in [[Spain|Spanish]] affairs which set Napoleon's brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. (Napoleon cynically entrusted the displaced Spanish royal family to Talleyrand's care at his own château of [[Valençay]] - effectively making him their gaoler.) At the Congress of Erfurt (September 1808), Talleyrand worked behind Napoleon's back to harden Tsar Alexander I's previously complaisant attitude towards Napoleon. The breach between the Emperor and his Grand Chamberlain (as Talleyrand now was) became so deep that Napoleon called him 's**t in silk stockings' and once berated him in front of a group of military marshals. Thus the scene was set for Talleyrand's open change of side at Napoleon's first abdication in 1814.<br />
<br />
[[Category:historical people]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Charles-Maurice_de_TalleyrandCharles-Maurice de Talleyrand2009-08-27T16:47:51Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Article created</p>
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<div>'''Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord''', sometime Bishop of Autun and (from 1806) sovereign Prince of Benevento, was a [[France|French]] diplomat, goverment minister and political manipulator. Born to a noble but somewhat impoverished family in February 1754, he was disqualified by a club-foot (the result of an accident in babyhood) for a military career), and his parents - keeping him at a distance - destined him for the Church. He was ordained in 1779 and rose to the Bishopric of Autun ten years later; but his ready adherence to the revolutionary party, on whose behalf he took a lead in the confiscation of Church property by the State, earned him excommunication and compelled him to resign his office in 1791.<br />
<br />
In 1792 Talleyrand found his métier as a diplomat, visiting [[London]] in order to sound out British attitudes to the French Revolution. (According to O'Brian in ''[[The Surgeon's Mate (novel)|The Surgeon's Mate]]'', [[Stephen Maturin]] met Talleyrand during this visit.) Later that year he returned as an exile, having been detected in a clandestine correspondence with the Comte de Provence who afterwards became King Louis XVIII of France. This kind of opportunistic double-dealing would remain characteristic of him. After a spell in the United States, Talleyrand was rehabilitated in 1796. He became an early supporter of [[Napoleon]], whose seizure of power in 1799 owed much to Talleyrand's machinations. Talleyrand was now appointed Minister of External Relations, a post which he held until 1807; as such he was largely responsible for the negotiations which followed Napoleon's great victories of the period.<br />
<br />
[[Category:historical people]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Lexicon:Procellaria_gigantean_of_MumpsimusLexicon:Procellaria gigantean of Mumpsimus2009-07-10T08:58:06Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* Additional information */</p>
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<table cellspacing=0 style="border: none; padding: 0 20px 2px 0;"><br />
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<th style="text-align: right; padding: 0 8px 8px 0;">Citation:</th><br />
<td style="text-align: left; padding: 0 0px 8px 0;">''procellaria gigantean of Mumpsimus''</td><br />
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<th style="text-align: right; padding: 0 8px 8px 0;">Language:</th><br />
<td style="text-align: left; padding: 0 0px 8px 0;">Latin</td><br />
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<th style="text-align: right; padding: 0 8px 8px 0;">References:</th><br />
<td style="text-align: left; padding: 0 0px 8px 0;">''[[The Unknown Shore]]'', page 136</td><br />
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<th style="text-align: right; padding: 0 8px 8px 0;">Meaning:</th><br />
<td style="text-align: left; padding: 0 0px 8px 0;">the giant wind-borne one of Mumpsimus</td><br />
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<p style="font-weight: bold; line-height: 70%;">Notes:</p><br />
----<br />
''Mumpsimus'' is a joke name.<br />
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==Additional information==<br />
''Procellaria gigantea'' (''sic:'' this corrected spelling, without the redundant final ''n'', appears in the HarperCollins paperback, p.110) is a genuine scientific name, actually coined by J.F. Gmelin in 1789. The English name of the bird so designated is usually given as Southern Giant Petrel; Audubon knew it as the Giant Fulmar and sailors, colloquially, as the [[Stinkpot]].<br />
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[[Category:Guide for the Perplexed:-P-]] [[Category:Guide for the Perplexed:Latin]] [[Category:Guide for the Perplexed:Latin:The Unknown Shore]] [[Category:Guide for the Perplexed:Latin:The Unknown Shore (chapter 07)]] [[Category:Guide for the Perplexed:The Unknown Shore]] [[Category:Guide for the Perplexed:The Unknown Shore (chapter 07)]] [[Category:Guide for the Perplexed:All Articles]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Orlop_deckOrlop deck2009-06-30T16:57:19Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Note on derivation of the name</p>
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<div>The '''orlop deck''' is the lowest deck of a vessel, where the cables are stowed ''overlapping'', hence the name. It is almost invariably a nasty, slimy place due to the wet and muddy cables stowed there. The name, which already appears in English usage in papers connected with the ship ''Mary Rose'' (1510-45), is derived from the Dutch noun ''overloop'' ('overflow, passage, gangway').<br />
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[[Category:Parts of a sailing vessel]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/HMS_Surprise_(ship)HMS Surprise (ship)2009-06-26T15:44:04Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Additions & corrections from Lavery & Hunt, 'The Frigate Surprise'</p>
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<div>'''''HMS Surprise''''', a [[frigate]] of the [[rate|sixth rate]], is the ship most closely associated with [[Jack Aubrey]] from the third book of the Canon, ''[[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]]'', until the very end.<br />
<br />
==Specification==<br />
''Surprise'' was 126 feet (38 metres) long on the gun-deck and 31 feet (9.45 metres) in beam; she was rated at just under 579 tons (589.5 tonnes). She is usually described as a 28-gun ship, but this was a somewhat artificial reckoning to distinguish her from an unrated [[post ship]] on the one hand (such vessels might carry up to 26 guns) and from a 32-gun frigate on the other. In fact her main deck was pierced for 24 guns, while the [[quarter deck]] carried a further eight to twelve and her [[forecastle]] between two and six, all these being of smaller [[calibre]]. The guns on the main deck were either nine-pounder long guns or 32-pounder [[carronade]]s.<br />
<br />
''Surprise'' is usually said to have been equipped with an abnormally tall [[mast|mainmast]], designed for a 36-gun frigate, and POB accepts this. However, recent research by Brian Lavery <ref>Lavery, Brian, and Geoff Hunt: ''The Frigate Surprise'' (London, Conway Maritime, 2008)</ref> suggests that this may have been at most a short-lived experiment on the part of Captain Hamilton (see below). By contrast, a letter written by Hamilton in May 1798 instructs the dockyard to remove the mainmast and set up the existing foremast (which would have been shorter) in its place, on the grounds that this would make the ship more 'stiff' or stable; and the record (also cited by Lavery) of the ship's fittings at the time of sale in 1802 seems consistent with this, all the spars being appropriate to a 24- or even 20-gun ship. <ref>The mainmast was then 71ft and the foremast 66ft. By contrast, the table in Burney, ''New Universal Dictionary of the Marine'' (1815: article 'Mast') gives the lower mainmast of a 28-gun ship as 81ft tall as against 89ft for a 36 and 71ft for a 20. [[Geoff Hunt]] (''The Marine Art of Geoff Hunt'' [Conway Maritime, 2004], p.114) adopts the 89ft figure; he reckons the overall height of the main-topgallant truck as 146ft.</ref>. She was established for a crew of between 200 and 240.<br />
<br />
By the standards of the 1790s ''Surprise'' was decidedly on the small side for a frigate; many such ships were over 150 feet long and were reckoned at 1000 tons or more. Nonetheless, she briefly enjoyed the status of a [[rate|fifth rate]] ship before reverting to the sixth rate.<br />
<br />
==''Surprise'' in history==<br />
''Surprise'' began her life in 1794 as the French corvette ''L'Unité'', designed by Pierre-Alexandre-Laurent Forfait who was at one time Minister of Marine under [[Napoleon Bonaparte|Napoleon]]. Captured by HMS ''Inconstant'' in April 1796, she was renamed (since the Royal Navy already possessed a ship called ''Unité'', taken just a week previously) and served for six years, mostly in the Caribbean. In 1801 her penultimate captain, Christopher Laroche, reported that she sailed well before the wind but made a great deal of [[leeway]] when close-hauled - a contrast to her performance in the Canon. She was by then in poor condition and was sent home as escort to a convoy, to end her naval career as an observation-vessel off the [[Netherlands|Dutch]] coast. Nothing is known of her fate after she was sold out of the Service in February 1802.<br />
<br />
Her most distinguished action dates from October 1799, when she was commanded by Captain Sir Edward Hamilton. The crew of the frigate ''[[HMS Hermione]]'' had mutinied under great provocation, murdered their officers and handed their ship over to the [[Spain|Spanish]], who had her moored under very strong guard at Puerto Cabello on the Spanish American coast. Nonetheless, boats from ''Surprise'' succeeded in cutting out ''Hermione'' and restoring her to the King's service.<br />
<br />
==''Surprise'' in the Canon==<br />
O'Brian's ''Surprise'' retains the French origin and name, the specification and the history of the real ship, but he has greatly extended her lifespan in both directions. In ''[[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]]'' we are told that Jack had served on board her when he was a [[midshipman]] - that is to say before 1792, since his [[commission]] as [[lieutenant]] dates from that year. As the war against the [[France|French]] Republic did not break out until 1793, it follows that the capture of ''Surprise'' must have taken place in the last previous period of hostilities between [[Great Britain|Britain]] and France, namely the war of [[American Revolutionary War|American independence]], which came to an end in 1783. Thus the fictional ''Surprise'' is at least eleven years older than her prototype. At the other extreme, O'Brian's ''Surprise'' is still at sea in 1817. O'Brian also raises her principal armament (when she is carrying long guns) from 9-pounders to 12-pounders; he postulates several major refits (the last in ''[[Blue at the Mizzen]]'') to account for her ability to cope with the stress of this and of her exceptionally eventful service.<br />
===Ship's Schedule===<br />
The daily routine for the crew left it to the morning watch -- 0400-0800 -- "to show the sun a spotless deck". Aubrey himself typically rose at 0600, and the hands were piped to dinner at "eight bells in the forenoon watch" -- 1200, noon -- after the "officers fixed the height of the noonday sun".<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Commodore''. (c)1994 by Patrick O'Brian. First American Edition, 1995. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY: p. 246</ref> <br />
<br />
===Specifications in the Canon===<br />
''Surprise'' displaced "less than six hundred tons"<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Letter of Marque''. (c)1988 by Patrick O'Brian. First American Edition, 1990. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY: p. 49</ref> and her best bower weighed thirty-one [[hundredweight]], or 3,472lbs.<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Far Side of the World''. (c)1984 by William Collins Sons & Co., Ltd. Published as a Norton Paperback 1992: pp. 235-6</ref><br />
<br />
Among her idiosyncratic features, ''Surprise'' shipped a spritsail course, "an odd, rather old-fashioned sail, slung under the [[bowsprit]] and masking the [[chasers]]".<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Reverse of the Medal''. (c)1986 by William Collins Sons & Co., Ltd. First published as a Norton Paperback 1992: p. 111</ref><br />
<br />
Although she carried numerous different armament in her time, during the latter part of the [[Aubreyad]]'s extended 1813, ''Surprise'' "carried twenty-two twelve-pounders [ [[cannon|long guns]] ] on her maindeck and two beautiful brass long nines...." one of these called ''Beelzebub''<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Nutmeg of Consolation''. (c) 1991 W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY: pp. 125 & 142</ref> "...She possessed six twenty-four-pounder carronades, but since they tended to oppress her in heavy seas they were often struck down into the hold".<ref>''Ibid''. p. 81</ref> Of these guns, the names of the starboard -- even numbered from two through twenty-four -- included ''Wilful Murder'' (number 4), ''Towser'' (number 6), ''Jumping Billy'' (number 22), ''True Blue'' (number 24), ''Viper'', ''Mad Anthony'', ''Bulldog'', and ''Nancy's Fancy''<ref>''Ibid.'' pp. 84-85</ref>, as well as ''Belcher'', ''Sudden Death'', ''Tom Crib''<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Letter of Marque''. (c)1988 by Patrick O'Brian. First American Edition, 1990. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY: p. 39</ref>, ''Nancy Dawson'', ''Revenge'', and ''Spitfire'', the latter shipped adjacent to ''Sudden Death''.<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Truelove''. (c)1992 by Patrick O'Brian. First American Edition, 1992. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY: pp. 217, 220</ref> The carronades were "only a third the weight of the ''Surprise'''s regular twelve-pounder cannon but fir[ed] a ball twice as heavy; furthermore they could be fought by a much smaller crew -- two zealous hands at a pinch, as opposed to the seven or eight gathered round a long twelve. On the other hand, they could not fire their heavy ball very far nor very accurately".<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Wine-Dark Sea''. (c) 1993 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110: p. 67</ref> Aubrey is frequently mentioned to have preferred using slow-match to the more modern and, to his mind, less reliable flint locks in the earlier portion of the canon, but later reflect with pride on "the brilliant flint-locks that now...adorned ''Surprise''s guns, doing away with those potential misfires when the linstock [''sic''] wavered over the touch hole or was doused by flying spray."<ref> O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Hundred Days''. (c) 1998 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY: p. 40; However, that same volume contains later references to linstocks, ''q''.''v''., p. 58, and to slow-match, ''q''.''v''., p. 262, with no future mention of flint-locks.</ref><br />
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The gunroom was "a long dim corridor-like room, some eighteen feet wide and twenty-eight in length, with an almost equally long table running down the middle and the officers' cabin doors opening on to the narrow space on either side -- opening outwards, since if they opened the other way they must necessarily crush the man within." The mizzen-mast ran through it to the keelson below.<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Wine-Dark Sea''. (c) 1993 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110: p. 107</ref><br />
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{{spoiler|series}}<br />
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Jack Aubrey first takes command of the ship in 1805, in ''[[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]]''. In ''[[The Reverse of the Medal]]'' she is bought by [[Stephen Maturin]] on his friend's behalf; later Jack buys her from Stephen and leases her to the [[Royal Navy|Navy]], ostensibly as a survey vessel but in fact to carry Stephen to [[South America]] for secret dealings with anti-Spanish forces there, a theme which runs from ''[[The Thirteen-Gun Salute]]'' to ''[[21: The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey|21]]''. In the latter book ''Surprise'' is last heard of as sailing back to [[England]] with Jack's despatches.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/><br />
=== External Links ===<br />
[http://members.aol.com/batrnq/Surprise/Surprise1.htm Bruce Trinque's ''HMS Surprise'' web pages], containing a wealth of technical and historical information (partly drawn from Winfield, ''British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793-1817'' (2005)), along with plans and sections.<br />
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[[Category:Historical ships|Surprise, HMS]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Jack_AubreyJack Aubrey2009-06-25T08:23:26Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* Early career */ Link corrected</p>
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<div>'''John Aubrey'''<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''Treason's Harbor''.(c)1983. W.W. Norton and Company, New York, NY; p. 173: Aubrey signs his letter home "your most affectionate husband, Jno Aubrey." Jno was the common abbreviation for John at the time. See also, O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Thirteen-Gun Salute''. (c)1989 William Collins Sons & Co., Ltd., Glasgow: p. 88</ref> is usually known as '''Jack Aubrey''' in the Aubrey-Maturin series. One of two primary protagonists of the series, Aubrey begins the series as a [[Royal Navy]] [[lieutenant]] in [[Port Mahon]], [[Minorca]], in [[Master and Commander (novel)|Master and Commander]]. <br />
<br />
In the opening scene, Aubrey is at a concert at Governor's House in Port Mahon. He is described as "Between twenty and thirty whose big form overflowed his seat...with the silver medal of the Nile in his buttonhole...while his bright blue eyes, staring from what would have been a pink-a-white face if it had not been so deeply tanned gazed fixedly at the bow of the first violin." (Norton pg 7) Early in his career, "he was familiarly known as Goldilocks" because of the brightness of his long yellow hair.<ref> O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Nutmeg of Consolation''. (c) 1991 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY: p. 133</ref> <br />
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== Family background and childhood ==<br />
Jack Aubrey is the oldest son of [[General Aubrey]] of [[Woolcombe]] in the County of Dorset. His family has been lords of the manor for generations. In ''[[The Surgeon's Mate (novel)|The Surgeon's Mate]]'' he is said to have been 'a seventeen-year-old [[master's mate]]' on board ''HMS Resolution'' at the time of an action near [[Brest]], and this would imply that he was born in 1774 or 1775, since such an action could only have taken place after the declaration of war against [[France]] in 1793; however, elsewhere he is said to have already gained his commission as lieutenant in 1792, and this suggests that he was born soon after 1770. His mother died when he was a small child and he was cared for by his cousin [[Queenie, Lady Keith|Queenie Keith]]. His education was intermittent, although a few Latin tags remained with him into maturity. [[Philip Broke]], afterwards captain of ''[[HMS Shannon]]'', was a childhood friend.<br />
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== Early career ==<br />
Aubrey entered the navy serving "under a nephew of the amiable Admiral Boscawen".<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Truelove''. (c)1992 by Patrick O'Brian. First American Edition, 1992. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY: p. 191</ref> This may have been aboard HMS ''Sylph'', on which he served as a boy.<ref> O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Nutmeg of Consolation''. (c) 1991 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY: p. 221</ref><br />
<br />
He was a midshipman aboard HMS ''Bellerophon'', serving with [[Heneage Dundas]] in the West Indies, where they engaged in a sword duel over a disputed game of backgammon, a duel in which Aubrey received a scar but which ended with the two friends reunited for life.<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Commodore''. (c)1994 by Patrick O'Brian. First American Edition, 1995. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY: pp. 117, 4-5</ref> He almost drowned in the Bay of Biscay off Cape Ortegal while a midshipman in the 38-gun frigate ''Latona''.<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''Blue at the Mizzen''. (c) 1999 W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY 10110. p. 88</ref> Still a midshipman but now aboard ''HMS Resolution'', Aubrey was disrated by Captain Douglas and turned before the mast where he spent some months as a foremast-hand. He originally tells [[Stephen Maturin|Maturin]] that the cause of his disrating was that he kept a [[Sally M'puta|girl]]<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Reverse of the Medal''. (c)1986 First published as a Norton Paperback 1992. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY: p. 36</ref> in the [[cable tier]]. In [[The Reverse of the Medal]], however, Captain Goole, who was himself a midshipman on ''Resolution'' at the time, tells his wife that it was due to another liberty Aubrey took with the rule. "He stole most of the captain's dish of tripe by means of a system of hooks and tackles."<ref>''Ibid''.: p. 13, see also, O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Nutmeg of Consolation''. (c) 1991 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY: pp. 97-98</ref> Aubrey would later serve under Captain Richardson as [[master's mate]] in the ''Sybille''. <ref> O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Hundred Days''. (c) 1998 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY: p. 238</ref><br />
<br />
Besides ''Resolution'', Jack served on HMS ''Colossus''<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Thirteen-Gun Salute''.(c) 1989 William Collins Sons & Co., Ltd., Glasgow: p. 88</ref> and as [[midshipman]] on HMS ''Namur''.<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Far Side of the World''. (c)1984 by William Collins Sons & Co., Ltd. Published as a Norton Paperback 1992: p. 373</ref> At a unknown time he served on board ''[[HMS Surprise (ship)|HMS Surprise]]'' as a midshipmen. He spent some time in HMS ''Minerva'', sailing to England from the Cape of Good Hope under Captain Soules.<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Wine-Dark Sea''. (c) 1993 W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110: p. 17</ref> As [[lieutenant]], he took part in the [[Battle of Cape St. Vincent]] (1797) on board the ''Orion'' and in the [[Battle of the Nile]] (1798) on the ''[[HMS Leander|Leander]]''; it was this occasion which brought him into contact with [[Horatio Nelson|Nelson]]. He also served as a lieutenant aboard HMS ''Arethusa''.<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Commodore''. (c)1994 by Patrick O'Brian. First American Edition, 1995. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY.</ref><br />
<br />
==In the Canon==<br />
{{spoiler|the whole series}}<br />
<br />
Highlights of his life and career as presented in the Canon: <br />
*Promoted to [[Master and Commander (rank)|Master and Commander]] in [[Master and Commander (novel)|Master and Commander]]. <br />
*Promoted to [[Post Captain (rank)|Post Captain]] in [[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]. <br />
*Marries [[Sophia Aubrey|Sophia Williams]] after the end of [[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]].<br />
*Posted as [[Commodore (rank)|Commodore]] to command a squadron tasked to pry the French out of the Mauritius island group in [[The Mauritius Command]].<br />
*Cashiered from the navy after conviction for stock exchange fraud in [[The Reverse of the Medal]] and earns a fortune commanding [[Surprise|HMS ''Surprise'']] as a [[Letter of marque (document)|letter of marque]].<br />
*Becomes a [[Member of Parliament|MP]] on the death of his father and is reinstated in the navy in [[The Thirteen-Gun Salute]].<br />
*Posted as Commodore tasked to interdict the slave trade off the coast of western [[Africa]] in [[The Commodore (novel)|The Commodore]]. <br />
*Promoted to [[Rear Admiral]] at the end of [[Blue at the Mizzen]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/><br />
<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin series characters|Aubrey, Jack]]<br />
[[Category:Commissioned officers|Aubrey, Jack]]<br />
[[Category:Flag officers|Aubrey, Jack]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/The_Unknown_ShoreThe Unknown Shore2009-06-23T16:32:49Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* Major characters in ''The Unknown Shore'' */ forenames added</p>
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<div>[[Image:Tus-cover-hc.jpg|thumb|right|Cover]]<br />
'''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.<br />
<br />
''Page references are to the HarperCollins paperback edition.''<br />
==Plot introduction==<br />
''For more details about the plot, which will contain '''spoilers''', see [[Summary for The Unknown Shore]]''<br />
<br />
[[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 [[George 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. <br />
<br />
''Time'' July 1740-February 1745.<br />
==Historical context==<br />
The story is firmly based on the accounts of Anson’s expedition by his chaplain Richard Walter (a prominent character in ''[[The Golden Ocean]]'') and by Jack Byron himself. Incidents such as the insubordination and shooting of Cozens, the injury and subsequent sickness of Captain Cheap (p.150) and the Indian [[cacique]]’s casual murder of a child who has dropped a basket of fish (p.215) are faithfully reproduced from the sources. O’Brian gives a more favourable report of [[Midshipman]] Cozens’s character than Walter, who represents him as a mere trouble-maker from beginning to end; but the greatest modification is the removal of Eliot the [[Lexicon:Surgeon|surgeon]] (who in fact remained with Cheap’s party until his death on the way to [[Chiloe Island]]) and his replacement by Toby. This foreshadows the treatment of historical fact in ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'', where [[Jack Aubrey]] simply steps into the shoes of the historical Josiah Rowley.<br />
<br />
==Major characters in ''The Unknown Shore''==<br />
(f) = fictional<br />
*'''Commodore (afterwards Admiral) George Anson''' (1697-1762) [[Commodore (rank)|Commodore]] of the expedition<br />
*'''Tobias Barrow''' (f) Poor boy educated and trained as a surgeon by Mr. Elwes; assistant surgeon of the ''Wager''<br />
*'''Midshipman (later Admiral) John Byron''' (1723-1786) [[Midshipman]] aboard the Wager [afterwards Admiral, and known as ‘Foul-Weather Jack’]<br />
*'''Campbell''' Midshipman of the Wager <br />
*'''Edward Chaworth''' (f) Jack Byron’s cousin and guardian<br />
*'''Georgiana Chaworth''' (f) Mr. Chaworth’s daughter, kindly disposed towards Tobias<br />
*'''Alexander Cheap''' [[Lieutenant]] of the ''Tryall'' and later captain of the ''Wager''<br />
*'''Cozens''' Midshipman of the ''Wager''<br />
*'''Crew of the ''Wager''''': Andrew (surgeon’s mate), John Bosman, Buckley, Church, Joseph Clinch, John Duck, Moses Lewis, Noble, Plastow (captain’s steward), Rose (quartermaster) <br />
*'''[Walter] Eliot''' Surgeon of the ''Wager''<br />
*'''Mr. Elwes''' (f) Country gentleman, ex-surgeon, who takes Tobias in hand as an educative experiment<br />
*'''Dr. Patrick Gedd''' Scottish physician in [[Santiago]] de Chile<br />
*'''Augustus Keppel, Peter Palafox and William Ransome''' Midshipmen of the ''Centurion''<br />
*'''[Isaac] Morris''' Midshipman of the ''Wager''<br />
*'''Officers of the ''Wager''''' [Robert] Bean ([[lieutenant]]), [John] Bulkeley ([[gunner]]), Clerk ([[Sailing master|master]]), Cummins ([[carpenter]]), Hamilton ([[Royal Marines|Marine]] lieutenant), Hervey ([[purser]]), Oakley (Marine surgeon)<br />
<br />
==Ships of ''The Unknown Shore''==<br />
''All are vessels of the Royal Navy except where stated''<br />
*'''Centurion''' (flagship) (60)<br />
*'''Gloucester''' (50)<br />
*'''Severn''' (50)<br />
*'''Pearl''' (40)<br />
*'''Wager''' (sloop) (28)<br />
*'''Tryall''' (sloop)<br />
*'''Anna''' (hired vessel)<br />
*'''Industry''' (hired vessel)<br />
*'''Lys''' (French frigate)<br />
<br />
==Themes and motifs==<br />
At first glance, ''The Unknown Shore'' can seem like a much less accomplished work than its predecessor ''[[The Golden Ocean]]''; the author appears less certain in his art and less like his later self than he had been three years previously. Thus the static description of Mr. Chaworth which opens the book is quite unlike anything else in his mature work and reads almost like one of P.G. Wodehouse’s portraits of Lord Emsworth. Again, O’Brian several times descends from the lofty and timeless impersonality of his authorial manner in order to comment on the differences between the era of which he writes and the reader’s own day – a reversion to Scott’s or Dickens’s method of historical-fiction writing. (See for example page 7: ‘At that period, and for more than a hundred years afterwards, all surgeons began as apprentices’, or the account of 18th-century English coinage on page 40.) Another example is his awkward refusal to write down the speeches of the Scotsman Campbell as they would actually have been uttered (p.66). If it were not for the clear references in this book to characters from ''[[The Golden Ocean]]'', one might wonder whether it had actually been, at least in part, the earlier of the two.<br />
<br />
The reason, perhaps, is that in ''The Unknown Shore'' we see O’Brian in transition. Thus far in his career, his work had been clearly divisible into two groups: on the one hand there are the tales of adventure – we might borrow Graham Greene’s terminology and call them entertainments – in the spirit of Stevenson and Kipling, largely dependent on exotic settings and incidents, and intended chiefly for young readers; on the other there are works such as ''[[Testimonies]]'', ''[[The Catalans A Novel|The Catalans]]'' and many of the short stories, in which the locations (while still often described with great love and vividness) are those that the author himself knew, and the inner life of the main characters is far more important than the telling of a story. In ''The Golden Ocean'' O’Brian had found the medium for reconciling these two aspects of his art, but he had not yet learned to exploit it to the full; he had not yet grasped that the ‘wooden world’ of the Navy was indeed a whole world of human behaviour in microcosm, ready for the deepest study. In this book he goes further. He can be as hilarious as ever, as in the ‘turkeys on the Monument’ incident (pp. 47-51), but often he looks into darkness: into the extremes of exposure and privation; into the deforming influence of authority on human nature (Captain Cheap, although he mellows at the last, is for most of the time a paradigm of petty tyranny and selfishness, far removed from the benevolent Olympian Anson of ''The Golden Ocean''); into the tragic accidents that can deal out life or death – Cozens, oafish but good-hearted, is shot dead because he has disputed an order, only doubtfully emanating from the captain himself, to stop a man’s grog for some trivial default; into the utter brutishness to which human beings, whether Indians or castaways, can sink where all principles and standards of conduct are either forgotten or not yet known. (All these will be fruitful elements in the Aubrey-Maturin books.) Amid all this material O’Brian is like a man learning to ride two horses at once. He does the trick, but there are places where the effort still shows.<br />
<br />
===Maturin in the making===<br />
Of course the most striking prefigurement of the later O’Brian is the character of Tobias Barrow and his friendship with Byron: on the one hand an uncouth, slovenly, unsocial and decidedly unsailorly but immensely learned, dedicated and courageous medical man; on the other a genial sea-officer named Jack. There are, it is true, important differences. Toby is a child of the London slums who has never mixed in any form of society and knows nothing whatever that he has not learned from either books, birds or beasts, whereas [[Stephen Maturin]], university man and sometime frequenter of the salons of Paris, is perfectly capable of behaving like a polished gentleman when he thinks of it. (What is true, however, is that the Stephen of the early Aubrey-Maturin books occasionally shows signs of reverting to his Barrovian origins; the ‘bees in the cabin’ episode of ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]'' is perhaps the outstanding example.) Furthermore, Toby (a mere surgeon, not a [[Lexicon:Physician|physician]]) does not quite stand on the same ethical eminence as Stephen; he has no hesitation in reinforcing his influence over the men by pretending to produce earwigs and mice from their wounds, a technique he learns from Eliot (p.88), whereas Stephen in ''[[The Far Side of the World]]'' catches Higgins at this practice and at once suppresses it. Again, Toby has little of Stephen’s intense intellectual life, although he does foreshadow Stephen’s radical fury against the abuse of authority (p.101, in regard to Jack’s [[punishment aboard ship|mastheading]]). Jack Byron, for his part, has not yet developed [[Jack Aubrey]]’s glorious uncertainty of idiom, but he does originate one favourite catch-phrase: ‘We only ''call'' it the gun-deck’ (p.69) – and there is a foreshadowing of Aubrey’s amatory entanglements in Byron’s involvement with the governor’s daughter (p.250). Each of the two has his chance to enjoy lecturing the other on his own special area of knowledge, just as Maturin and Aubrey will do, and the scene of Toby’s emergence from delirium (pp.158-9) has all the tenderness, touched with humour, of the later episodes such as Stephen’s convalescences in ''[[The Far Side of the World]]'' or ''[[The Letter of Marque (novel)|The Letter of Marque]]''. In short, the details of the friendship will bear (and will receive) much expansion, but the framework is already securely in place.<br />
<br />
{{NonAubreyMaturin}}<br />
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[[Category:Novels|Unknown Shore, The]][[Category:The Unknown Shore]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/HMS_Surprise_(ship)HMS Surprise (ship)2008-06-05T12:13:18Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Note on mainmast height, & minor corrections</p>
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<div>'''''HMS Surprise''''', a [[frigate]] of the [[rate|sixth rate]], is the ship most closely associated with [[Jack Aubrey]] from the third book of the Canon, ''[[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]]'', until the very end.<br />
<br />
==Specification==<br />
''Surprise'' was 126 feet (38 metres) long on the gun-deck and 31 feet (9.45 metres) in beam; she was rated at just under 579 tons (589.5 tonnes). She is usually described as a 28-gun ship, but this was a somewhat artificial reckoning to distinguish her from an unrated [[post ship]] on the one hand (such vessels might carry up to 26 guns) and from a 32-gun frigate on the other. In fact her main deck was pierced for 24 guns, while the [[quarter deck]] carried a further eight to twelve and her [[forecastle]] between two and six, all these being of smaller [[calibre]]. The guns on the main deck were either nine-pounder long guns or 32-pounder [[carronade]]s. ''Surprise'' was noted for being equipped with an abnormally tall [[mast|mainmast]], designed for a 36-gun frigate<ref>According to the table in Burney, ''New Universal Dictionary of the Marine'' (1815: article 'Mast'), the lower mainmast of a 36-gun ship was 89ft tall as against 81ft for a 28. [[Geoff Hunt]] (''The Marine Art of Geoff Hunt'' [Conway Maritime, 2004], p.114) adopts this figure; he reckons the overall height of the main-topgallant truck as 146ft.</ref>. She was established for a crew of between 200 and 240.<br />
<br />
By the standards of the 1790s ''Surprise'' was decidedly on the small side for a frigate; many such ships were over 150 feet long and were reckoned at 1000 tons or more. Nonetheless, she briefly enjoyed the status of a [[rate|fifth rate]] ship before reverting to the sixth rate.<br />
<br />
==''Surprise'' in history==<br />
''Surprise'' began her life in 1794 as a French ship, under the name of ''Unité''. Captured by HMS ''Inconstant'' in April 1796, she was renamed (since the Royal Navy already possessed a ship called ''Unité'', taken just a week previously) and served for six years. Nothing is known of her fate after she was sold out of the Service in February 1802.<br />
<br />
Her most distinguished action dates from 1799, when she was commanded by Captain Edward Hamilton. The crew of the frigate ''[[HMS Hermione]]'' had mutinied under great provocation, murdered their officers and handed their ship over to the [[Spain|Spanish]], who had her moored under very strong guard at Puerto Cabello on the Spanish American coast. Nonetheless, boats from ''Surprise'' succeeded in cutting out ''Hermione'' and restoring her to the King's service.<br />
<br />
==''Surprise'' in the Canon==<br />
O'Brian's ''Surprise'' retains the French origin and name, the specification and the history of the real ship, but he has greatly extended her lifespan in both directions. In ''[[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]]'' we are told that Jack had served on board her when he was a [[midshipman]] - that is to say before 1792, since his [[commission]] as [[lieutenant]] dates from that year. As the war against the [[France|French]] Republic did not break out until 1793, it follows that the capture of ''Surprise'' must have taken place in the last previous period of hostilities between [[Great Britain|Britain]] and France, namely the war of [[American Revolutionary War|American independence]], which came to an end in 1783. Thus the fictional ''Surprise'' is at least eleven years older than her prototype. At the other extreme, O'Brian's ''Surprise'' is still at sea in 1817. O'Brian also raises her principal armament (when she is carrying long guns) from 9-pounders to 12-pounders; he postulates several major refits (the last in ''[[Blue at the Mizzen]]'') to account for her ability to cope with the stress of this and of her exceptionally eventful service.<br />
{{spoiler|series}}<br />
Jack Aubrey first takes command of the ship in 1805, in ''[[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]]''. In ''[[The Reverse of the Medal]]'' she is bought by [[Stephen Maturin]] on his friend's behalf; later Jack buys her from Stephen and leases her to the [[Royal Navy|Navy]], ostensibly as a survey vessel but in fact to carry Stephen to [[South America]] for secret dealings with anti-Spanish forces there, a theme which runs from ''[[The Thirteen-Gun Salute]]'' to ''[[21: The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey|21]]''. In the latter book ''Surprise'' is last heard of as sailing back to [[England]] with Jack's despatches.<br />
<br />
===Specifications in the Canon===<br />
''Surprise'' displaced "less than six hundred tons"<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Letter of Marque''. (c)1988 by Patrick O'Brian. First American Edition, 1990. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY: p. 49</ref> and her best bower weighed thirty-one [[hundredweight]], or 3,472lbs.<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Far Side of the World''. (c)1984 by William Collins Sons & Co., Ltd. Published as a Norton Paperback 1992: pp. 235-6</ref><br />
<br />
Among her idiosyncratic features, ''Surprise'' shipped a spritsail course, "an odd, rather old-fashioned sail, slung under the [[bowsprit]] and masking the [[chasers]]".<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Reverse of the Medal''. (c)1986 by William Collins Sons & Co., Ltd. First published as a Norton Paperback 1992: p. 111</ref><br />
<br />
Although she carried numerous different armament in her time, during the latter part of the [[Aubreyad]]'s extended 1813, ''Surprise'' "carried twenty-two twelve-pounders [ [[cannon|long guns]] ] on her maindeck and two beautiful brass long nines...." one of these called ''Beelzebub''<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Nutmeg of Consolation''. (c) 1991 W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY: pp. 125 & 142</ref> "...She possessed six twenty-four-pounder carronades, but since they tended to oppress her in heavy seas they were often struck down into the hold".<ref>''Ibid''. p. 81</ref> Of these guns, the names of the starboard -- even numbered from two through twenty-four -- included ''Wilful Murder'' (number 4), ''Towser'' (number 6), ''Jumping Billy'' (number 22), ''True Blue'' (number 24), ''Viper'', ''Mad Anthony'', ''Bulldog'', and ''Nancy's Fancy''<ref>''Ibid.'' pp. 84-85</ref>, as well as ''Belcher'', ''Sudden Death'', ''Tom Crib''<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Letter of Marque''. (c)1988 by Patrick O'Brian. First American Edition, 1990. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY: p. 39</ref>, ''Nancy Dawson'', ''Revenge'', and ''Spitfire'', the latter shipped adjacent to ''Sudden Death''.<ref>O'Brian, Patrick. ''The Truelove''. (c)1992 by Patrick O'Brian. First American Edition, 1992. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY: pp. 217, 220</ref><br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/><br />
=== External Links ===<br />
[http://members.aol.com/batrnq/Surprise/Surprise1.htm Bruce Trinque's ''HMS Surprise'' web pages], containing a wealth of technical and historical information (partly drawn from Winfield, ''British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793-1817'' (2005)), along with plans and sections.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Historical ships|Surprise, HMS]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/The_Mauritius_CommandThe Mauritius Command2008-06-04T11:49:38Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* The Mauritius campaign in history */ Chronology (1810, completed)</p>
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<div>[[Image:Tmc-cover-hc.jpg|left|thumb|Cover]]<br />
<br />
''For more details about the plot, which will contain '''spoilers''', see [[Summary for The Mauritius Command]]'' <br />
{{stub}}<br />
{{AubreyMaturinBooks}}<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin novels|Mauritius Command, The]][[Category:The Mauritius Command]]<br />
<br />
==The Mauritius campaign in history==<br />
{{spoiler| ''The Mauritius Command''}}<br />
<br />
O'Brian says truly in his foreword that he has adhered closely to the facts of history. No other book in the series retains nearly so much of the real-life course of events; even minor details such as the burning of the silk, the sacrifice of a transport-brig to provide a breakwater during the Réunion landings, Farquhar's propaganda activities and Captain Tomkinson's refusal of the command of the ''Windham'' are faithfully transcribed from the historical record. The principal changes he has allowed himself are as follows:<br />
*[[Jack Aubrey]] replaces Josiah Rowley as [[Commodore (rank)|Commodore]].<br />
*[[Lord Clonfert]] replaces Captain Nesbit Willoughby as [[Master and Commander (rank)|commander]] of the ''Otter'' and subsequently captain of the ''Néréide''. Willoughby was an altogether more robust figure, several of whose exploits are transferred to Jack himself in the book; he was wounded in the same way as Clonfert but recovered and lived to be 72.<br />
*[[Captain Robert Corbett]]'s fate is uncertain. The historian William James mentions the theory that he was killed by his crew but rejects it, suggesting instead that the wounded Corbett threw away his life by tearing off his bandages, a motif which O'Brian transfers to Clonfert.<br />
*Hamelin, the French commodore, was not killed on board the ''Vénus'' but lived until 1839.<br />
<br />
A curious detail is that [[HMS Leopard (ship)|HMS Leopard]] (50) was briefly (April-May 1810) included in the squadron. O'Brian does not mention her in this book; he had other plans for her.<br />
<br />
The following chronology of the campaign is based on Vol. 5 of James's ''Naval History of Great Britain''. Following James's convenient practice, the names of British ships are given in roman type and those of foreign vessels (French unless otherwise indicated) in italic.<br />
<br />
*'''1808 Oct. 8''' Modeste (36) captures ''Jéna'' (18), which becomes HM sloop Victor<br />
*'''1809 Spring''' [[Rodriguez|Rodrigues]] Island captured by [[Harry Keating|Col. Keating]]'s troops for use as base for operations against [[Réunion]] and [[Mauritius]]; ''Vénus'', ''Manche'', ''Bellone'' & ''Caroline'' reach Mauritius<br />
*'''May 31''' ''Caroline'' captures Indiamen Streatham & Europe<br />
*'''Aug. 14''' Otter (N. Willoughby) captures French brig at Rivière-Noire, Mauritius<br />
*'''Sept. 20-23''' Raisonable, Nereide, Sirius & Boadicea, with smaller vessels (Commodore Rowley), working with Keating's forces, capture port of Saint-Paul, Réunion. Silk warehouse burned down (May 22). ''Caroline'' taken; Streatham & Europe recaptured. Suicide of Governor Desbrusleys. Willoughby made [[Post Captain (rank)|post]] and transferred to Nereide.<br />
*'''Nov. 2''' ''Bellone'' recaptures Victor, which apparently retains her new name in French hands<br />
*'''Nov. 18''' ''Vénus'' & ''Manche'' capture Indiamen Windham, United-Kingdom & Charlton<br />
*'''Nov. 22''' ''Bellone'' captures Portuguese ''Minerva'' (henceforward ''Minerve'')<br />
*'''Dec. 29''' Magicienne (L. Curtis) recaptures Windham<br />
*'''1810 Apr. 30''' Nereide's boats successfully raid Jacolet, Mauritius<br />
*'''July 3''' ''Bellone'' & ''Minerve'' capture Indiamen Windham (again) & Ceylon; Boadicea sets out from Rodrigues with Farquhar (Governor-designate) on board<br />
*'''July 6''' Iphigenia (H. Lambert) joins squadron<br />
*'''July 7''' Landings at Grande-Chaloupe & Rivière des Pluies, Réunion (at the latter, transport Ulney is sacrificed to provide breakwater against dangerous surf)<br />
*'''July 8''' French forces on Réunion surrender. Farquhar installed as Governor<br />
*'''Aug. 13''' Boats from Nereide & Iphigenia seize Ile de la Passe at entrance to Grand'Port (O'Brian's 'Port South-East'), Mauritius<br />
*'''Aug. 17-20''' Willoughby leads series of assaults on forts around Mauritius & distributes propaganda leaflets<br />
*'''Aug. 20-25''' Naval action at Grand'Port. Willoughby uses French signals to lure ''Bellone'', ''Minerve'' & ''Victor'' into the harbour. Discarded French flag causes fire in Ile de la Passe battery, disrupting British gunnery. ''Victor'' strikes but then escapes. Boat party from Sirius (S. Pym) recaptures Windham once more (Aug. 21). Sirius & Magicienne run irretrievably aground. Nereide, left unsupported against ''Bellone'' & ''Victor'', strikes after savage battle. Pym, as senior captain, rejects Lambert's plan to board ''Bellone''. Magicienne & then Sirius abandoned & destroyed<br />
*'';'Aug. 27''' Survivors of the Grand'Port disaster bring the news to Rowley at Rodrigues<br />
*'''Aug. 27''' Iphigenia captured by ''Astrée'' & ''Manche'' off Ile de la Passe; becomes ''Iphigénie''<br />
*'''Sept. 9''' Africaine (R.Corbett) arrives at Rodrigues<br />
*'''Sept. 12-13''' Africaine, having become separated from Boadicea, engages ''Astrée'' & ''Iphigénie''; strikes after heavy losses. Recaptured by Boadicea, Otter & Staunch<br />
*'''Sept. 17''' HMS Ceylon (32; formerly Bombay [Indiaman] & not to be confused with the Ceylon captured by the French on 3 July) (C. Gordon) taken by ''Vénus'' & ''Victor''<br />
*'''Sept. 18''' Boadicea, her crew reinforced by survivors from Africaine, recovers HMS Ceylon & then captures ''Vénus''<br />
*'''Oct. 19''' Rowley's squadron blockades Port-Louis on W. coast of Mauritius<br />
*'''Nov. 22''' Greatly enlarged squadron - Illustrious (74), 12 frigates & over 50 sloops & transports, now under [[Admiral Bertie|Rear-Adm. Bertie]] - sets sail from Rodrigues<br />
*'''Nov. 29''' Squadron anchors at Grande-Baie near Port-Louis<br />
*'''Dec. 3''' Final surrender of French forces on Mauritius after series of land actions</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/The_Mauritius_CommandThe Mauritius Command2008-06-03T16:07:29Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* The Mauritius campaign in history */ Chronology (1810, part)</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Tmc-cover-hc.jpg|left|thumb|Cover]]<br />
<br />
''For more details about the plot, which will contain '''spoilers''', see [[Summary for The Mauritius Command]]'' <br />
{{stub}}<br />
{{AubreyMaturinBooks}}<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin novels|Mauritius Command, The]][[Category:The Mauritius Command]]<br />
<br />
==The Mauritius campaign in history==<br />
{{spoiler| ''The Mauritius Command''}}<br />
<br />
O'Brian says truly in his foreword that he has adhered closely to the facts of history. No other book in the series retains nearly so much of the real-life course of events; even minor details such as the burning of the silk, the sacrifice of a transport-brig to provide a breakwater during the Réunion landings, Farquhar's propaganda activities and the explosion caused by a French flag are faithfully transcribed from the historical record. The principal changes he has allowed himself are as follows:<br />
*[[Jack Aubrey]] replaces Josiah Rowley as [[Commodore (rank)|Commodore]].<br />
*[[Lord Clonfert]] replaces Captain Nesbit Willoughby as [[Master and Commander (rank)|commander]] of the ''Otter'' and subsequently captain of the ''Néréide''. Willoughby was an altogether more robust figure, several of whose exploits are transferred to Jack himself in the book; he was wounded in the same way as Clonfert but recovered and lived to be 72.<br />
*[[Captain Robert Corbett]]'s fate is uncertain. The historian William James mentions the theory that he was killed by his crew but rejects it, suggesting instead that the wounded Corbett threw away his life by tearing off his bandages, a motif which O'Brian transfers to Clonfert.<br />
*Hamelin, the French commodore, was not killed on board the ''Vénus'' but lived until 1839.<br />
<br />
A curious detail is that [[HMS Leopard (ship)|HMS Leopard]] (50) was briefly (April-May 1810) included in the squadron. O'Brian does not mention her in this book; he had other plans for her.<br />
<br />
The following chronology of the campaign is based on Vol. 5 of James's ''Naval History of Great Britain''. Following James's convenient practice, the names of British ships are given in roman type and those of foreign vessels (French unless otherwise indicated) in italic.<br />
<br />
*'''1808 Oct. 8''' Modeste (36) captures ''Jéna'' (18), which becomes HM sloop Victor<br />
*'''1809 Spring''' [[Rodriguez|Rodrigues]] Island captured by [[Harry Keating|Col. Keating]]'s troops for use as base for operations against [[Réunion]] and [[Mauritius]]; ''Vénus'', ''Manche'', ''Bellone'' & ''Caroline'' reach Mauritius<br />
*'''May 31''' Caroline captures Indiamen Streatham & Europe<br />
*'''Aug. 14''' Otter (N. Willoughby) captures French brig at Rivière-Noire, Mauritius<br />
*'''Sept. 20-23''' Raisonable, Nereide, Sirius & Boadicea, with smaller vessels (Commodore Rowley), working with Keating's forces, capture port of Saint-Paul, Réunion. Silk warehouse burned down (May 22). ''Caroline'' taken; Streatham & Europe recaptured. Suicide of Governor Desbrusleys. Willoughby made [[Post Captain (rank)|post]] and transferred to Nereide.<br />
*'''Nov. 2''' ''Bellone'' recaptures Victor, which apparently retains her new name in French hands<br />
*'''Nov. 18''' ''Vénus'' & ''Manche'' capture Indiamen Windham, United-Kingdom & Charlton<br />
*'''Nov. 22''' ''Bellone'' captures Portuguese ''Minerva'' (henceforward ''Minerve'')<br />
*'''Dec. 29''' Magicienne (L. Curtis) recaptures Windham<br />
*'''1810 Apr. 30''' Nereide's boats successfully raid Jacolet, Mauritius<br />
*'''July 3''' ''Bellone'' & ''Minerve'' capture Indiamen Windham (again) & Ceylon; Boadicea sets out from Rodrigues with Farquhar (Governor-designate) on board<br />
*'''July 6''' Iphigenia (H. Lambert) joins squadron<br />
*'''July 7''' Landings at Grande-Chaloupe & Rivière des Pluies, Réunion (at the latter, transport Ulney is sacrificed to provide breakwater against dangerous surf)<br />
*'''July 8''' French forces on Réunion surrender. Farquhar installed as Governor<br />
*'''Aug. 13''' Boats from Nereide & Iphigenia seize Ile de la Passe at entrance to Grand'Port (O'Brian's 'Port South-East'), Mauritius<br />
*'''Aug. 17-20''' Willouhgby lreads series of assaults on forts around Mauritius & distributes propaganda leaflets<br />
*'''Aug. 20-25''' Naval action at Grand'Port. Willoughby uses French signals to lure ''Bellone'', ''Minerve'' & ''Victor'' into the harbour. Discarded French flag causes fire in Ile de la Passe battery, disrupting British gunnery. ''Victor'' strikes but then escapes. Boat party from Sirius (S. Pym) recaptures Windham once more (Aug. 21). Sirius & Magicienne run aground. Nereide, left unsupported against Bellone & Victor, strikes after savage battle. Pym, as senior captain, rejects Lambert's plan to board Bellone. Magicienne & then Sirius abandoned & destroyed <br />
<br />
''[To be continued]''</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/The_Mauritius_CommandThe Mauritius Command2008-06-03T10:03:51Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* The Mauritius campaign in history */ Chronology (1808-9)</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Tmc-cover-hc.jpg|left|thumb|Cover]]<br />
<br />
''For more details about the plot, which will contain '''spoilers''', see [[Summary for The Mauritius Command]]'' <br />
{{stub}}<br />
{{AubreyMaturinBooks}}<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin novels|Mauritius Command, The]][[Category:The Mauritius Command]]<br />
<br />
==The Mauritius campaign in history==<br />
{{spoiler| ''The Mauritius Command''}}<br />
<br />
O'Brian says truly in his foreword that he has adhered closely to the facts of history. No other book in the series retains nearly so much of the real-life course of events; even minor details such as the burning of the silk, the sacrifice of a transport-brig to provide a breakwater during the Réunion landings, Farquhar's propaganda activities and the explosion caused by a French flag are faithfully transcribed from the historical record. The principal changes he has allowed himself are as follows:<br />
*[[Jack Aubrey]] replaces Josiah Rowley as [[Commodore (rank)|Commodore]].<br />
*[[Lord Clonfert]] replaces Captain Nesbit Willoughby as [[Master and Commander (rank)|commander]] of the ''Otter'' and subsequently captain of the ''Néréide''. Willoughby was an altogether more robust figure, several of whose exploits are transferred to Jack himself in the book; he was wounded in the same way as Clonfert but recovered and lived to be 72.<br />
*[[Captain Robert Corbett]]'s fate is uncertain. The historian William James mentions the theory that he was killed by his crew but rejects it, suggesting instead that the wounded Corbett threw away his life by tearing off his bandages, a motif which O'Brian transfers to Clonfert.<br />
*Hamelin, the French commodore, was not killed on board the ''Vénus'' but lived until 1839.<br />
<br />
A curious detail is that [[HMS Leopard (ship)|HMS Leopard]] (50) was briefly (April-May 1810) included in the squadron. O'Brian does not mention her in this book; he had other plans for her.<br />
<br />
The following chronology of the campaign is based on Vol. 5 of James's ''Naval History of Great Britain''. Following James's convenient practice, the names of British ships are given in roman type and those of foreign vessels (French unless otherwise indicated) in italic.<br />
<br />
*'''1808 Oct. 8''' Modeste (36) captures ''Jéna'' (18), which becomes HM sloop Victor<br />
*'''1809 Spring''' [[Rodriguez|Rodrigues]] Island captured by [[Harry Keating|Col. Keating]]'s troops for use as base for operations against [[Réunion]] and [[Mauritius]]; ''Vénus'', ''Manche'', ''Bellone'' & ''Caroline'' reach Mauritius<br />
*'''May 31''' Caroline captures Indiamen Streatham & Europe<br />
*'''Aug. 14''' Otter (N. Willoughby) captures French brig at Rivière-Noire, Mauritius<br />
*'''Sept. 20-23''' Raisonable, Nereide, Sirius & Boadicea, with smaller vessels (Commodore Rowley), working with Keating's forces, capture port of Saint-Paul, Réunion. Silk warehouse burned down (May 22). ''Caroline'' taken; Streatham & Europe recaptured. Suicide of Governor Desbrusleys. Willoughby made [[Post Captain (rank)|post]] and transferred to Nereide.<br />
*'''Nov. 2''' ''Bellone'' recaptures Victor, which apparently retains her new name in French hands<br />
*'''Nov. 18''' ''Vénus'' & ''Manche'' capture Indiamen Windham, United-Kingdom & Charlton<br />
*'''Nov. 22''' ''Bellone'' captures Portuguese ''Minerva'' (henceforward ''Minerve'')<br />
*'''Dec. 29''' Magicienne (L. Curtis) recaptures Windham<br />
<br />
''[To be continued]''</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/The_Mauritius_CommandThe Mauritius Command2008-06-02T17:07:50Z<p>Oliver Mundy: /* The Mauritius campaign in history */ corrections</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Tmc-cover-hc.jpg|left|thumb|Cover]]<br />
<br />
''For more details about the plot, which will contain '''spoilers''', see [[Summary for The Mauritius Command]]'' <br />
{{stub}}<br />
{{AubreyMaturinBooks}}<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin novels|Mauritius Command, The]][[Category:The Mauritius Command]]<br />
<br />
==The Mauritius campaign in history==<br />
{{spoiler| ''The Mauritius Command''}}<br />
<br />
O'Brian says truly in his foreword that he has adhered closely to the facts of history. No other book in the series retains nearly so much of the real-life course of events; even minor details such as the burning of the silk, the sacrifice of a transport-brig to provide a breakwater during the Réunion landings, Farquhar's propaganda leaflets and the explosion caused by a French flag are faithfully transcribed from the historical record. The principal changes he has allowed himself are as follows:<br />
*[[Jack Aubrey]] replaces Josiah Rowley as [[Commodore (rank)|Commodore]].<br />
*[[Lord Clonfert]] replaces Captain Nesbit Willoughby as [[Master and Commander (rank)|commander]] of the ''Otter'' and subsequently captain of the ''Néréide''. Willoughby was an altogether more robust figure, several of whose exploits are transferred to Jack himself in the book; he was wounded in the same way as Clonfert but recovered and lived to be 72.<br />
*[[Captain Robert Corbett]]'s fate is uncertain. The historian William James mentions the theory that he was killed by his crew but rejects it, suggesting instead that the wounded Corbett threw away his life by tearing off his bandages, a motif which O'Brian transfers to Clonfert.<br />
*Hamelin, the French commodore, was not killed on board the ''Vénus'' but lived until 1839.<br />
<br />
A curious detail is that [[HMS Leopard (ship)|HMS Leopard]] (50) was included in the squadron during 1809. O'Brian does not mention her in this book; he had other plans for her.<br />
<br />
A chronology of the historical campaign is in preparation.</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/The_Mauritius_CommandThe Mauritius Command2008-06-02T17:05:14Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Histprical background</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Tmc-cover-hc.jpg|left|thumb|Cover]]<br />
<br />
''For more details about the plot, which will contain '''spoilers''', see [[Summary for The Mauritius Command]]'' <br />
{{stub}}<br />
{{AubreyMaturinBooks}}<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin novels|Mauritius Command, The]][[Category:The Mauritius Command]]<br />
<br />
==The Mauritius campaign in history==<br />
{{spoiler| ''The Mauritius Command''}}<br />
<br />
O'Brian says truly in his foreword that he has adhered closely to the facts of history. No other book in the series retains nearly so much of the real-life course of events; even minor details such as the burning of the silk, the sacrifice of a transport-brig to provide a breakwater during the Réunion landings, Farquhar's propaganda leaflets and the explosion caused by a French flag are faithfully transcribed from the historical record. The principal changes he has allowed himself are as follows:<br />
*[[Jack Aubrey]] replaces Josiah Rowley as [[Commodore (rank)|Commodore]].<br />
*[[Lord Clonfert]] replaces Captain Nesbit Willoughby as [[Commander (rank)|commander]] of the ''Otter'' and subsequently captain of the ''Néréide''. Willoughby was an altogether more robust figure, several of whose exploits are transferred to Jack himself in the book; he was wounded in the same way as Clonfert but recovered and lived to be 72.<br />
*[[Captain Robert Corbett]]'s fate is uncertain. The historian William James mentions the theory that he was killed by his crew but rejects it, suggesting instead that the wounded Corbett threw away his life by tearing off his bandages, a motif which O'Brian transfers to Clonfert.<br />
*Hamelin, the French commodore, was not killed on board the ''Vénus'' but lived until 1839.<br />
<br />
A curious detail is that [[HMS Leopard]] (50) was included in the squadron during 1809. O'Brian does not mention her in this book; he had other plans for her.<br />
<br />
A chronology of the historical campaign is in preparation.</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Mrs_WilliamsMrs Williams2008-05-02T14:36:30Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Continuation</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Mrs Williams''' (Christian name unknown) is a wealthy widow residing at Mapes Court in Hampshire, [[England]]. She has three daughters, [[Sophia Aubrey|Sophie]], [[Frances]] and [[Cecilia]], who are unmarried at the time of the family's first appearance in ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]'', and when [[Jack Aubrey]] arrives as tenant of Melbury Lodge nearby, she immediately spreads her matchmaking nets for him on Sophie's behalf.<br />
<br />
{{spoiler|Post Captain to The Hundred Days}}<br />
<br />
Mrs Williams is a devious, opinionated, manipulative and rapacious personage, and when Jack loses his fortune in prize-money through the treachery of an agent, she withdraws her countenance from him, while keeping Stephen (who is known to be the owner of a castle in Spain) within her webs - a situation which underlies much of the emotional turmoil of ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]''. However, a genuine love has developed between Jack and Sophie, and in ''[[HMS Surprise (novel)|HMS Surprise]]'' Mrs Williams's objections are finally overcome, subject to Jack's clearing his debts and binding himself by a rigorous marriage settlement.<br />
<br />
In ''[[The Mauritius Command]]'' Mrs Williams's contrivances have rebounded on her own head; she in turn has lost all her money (and much of Sophie's too) by putting too much faith in a man of business, and she is now living with Jack as a dependent, showing a glimmering of real affection for his children (this is her only redeeming feature) but still as prone to prejudice and mischief as ever. In later life her avarice proves too strong for her puritanism and she become involved in a shady bookmaking enterprise. Her appetite for intrigue is inexhaustible; in ''[[The Commodore (novel)|The Commodore]]'' she delights in spreading tales of Diana's irregularities, and in ''[[The Yellow Admiral (novel)|The Yellow Admiral]]'' her prying fingers uncover [[Amanda Smith]]'s letters to Jack. The end of all her scheming is told, in retrospect, in ''[[The Hundred Days]]''.<br />
<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin series characters]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Mrs_WilliamsMrs Williams2008-05-02T13:38:35Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Article created</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Mrs Williams''' (Christian name unknown) is a wealthy widow residing at Mapes Court in Hampshire, [[England]]. Shre has three daughters, [[Sophia Aubrey|Sophie]], [[Frances]] and [[Cecilia]], who are unmarried at the time of the family's first appearance in ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]'', and the arrival of [[Jack Aubrey]] and [[Stephen Maturin]] as tenants of Melbury Lodge nearby arouses her matchmaking instincts.<br />
<br />
{{spoiler|Post Captain to The Hundred Days}}<br />
<br />
Mrs Williams is a devious, manipulative and rapacious personage, and when Jack loses his fortune in prize-money through the treachery of an agent, she immediately withdraws her countenance from him, while keeping Stephen (who is known to be the owner of a castle in Spain) within her webs - a situation which underlies much of the emotional turmoil of ''[[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]''. [To be continued]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Diana_VilliersDiana Villiers2008-05-01T16:38:43Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Continuation (to 'Letter of Marque')</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Diana Villiers''' is first introduced while riding in the hunt in the first chapter of [[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]. She is a cousin to [[Sophia Aubrey|Sophie Williams]], and lives as an almost penniless widow with her Williams relations. <br />
<br />
Diana is a black haired woman with blue eyes, strikingly tall and slender. Her appearance is of some importance to her and she often capitalizes upon it. She is a woman with a reputation and is perceived to be flirtatious. Both [[Jack Aubrey]] and [[Stephen Maturin]] fall for her; indeed she is a woman who is attractive to many men. She does possess a sense of loyalty, albeit an unconventional one. <br />
<br />
She occasionally hides her talents, such as the ability to play the piano; she is, however, a noted horsewoman. Her business sense is often lacking; she continually hovers between being poor and improvident. Much of her eventual wealth is due to the men she partners.<br />
<br />
== History ==<br />
=== Before Master and Commander ===<br />
Diana Villiers is the daughter of Mrs. Williams's sister, and of age with Sophie. Though [[United Kingdom|English]] by birth, she has spent much of her life abroad, particularly in [[India]], where both her father and her first husband were officers in the British army. She also remembers a stay in [[Paris]] as a girl. <br />
<br />
<br />
{{spoiler| ''Post Captain'' through ''The Hundred Days''}}<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Post Captain through Desolation Island ===<br />
[[Mrs Williams]] views Diana as a threat to Sophie's marriage prospects, and first bribes her with her own horse, and later arranges for her to care for their mad [[Edward Lowndes|Cousin Edward]]. Stephen, although with no inducement from Diana, falls in love with her. Jack, though fond of Sophie, finds little encouragement when Mrs. Williams discovers the state of his finances. He then turns with more affection to Diana, to Sophie's jealousy. Eventually, the two women have an argument, and Diana leaves the Williams household permanently. <br />
<br />
While Jack is stationed in [[The Downs]], Diana pursues a romantic relationship with him, and insists on pure friendship with Stephen. This leads to the men's estrangement and nearly a duel. Eventually, she goes into keeping with [[Richard Canning]], a wealthy married Jewish businessman in the [[East India Company]], and the couple travel to India. <br />
<br />
Jack, now engaged to Sophie, brings ''[[HMS Surprise (ship)|HMS Surprise]]'' to [[Bombay]], where Stephen plans to meet Diana. She is unhappy with her situation, and thus encouraged, Stephen proposes. Upon his visiting her again in [[Calcutta]] for her answer, they are interrupted by Canning, which results in a duel. Canning is killed, whether on purpose or accident is uncertain, after he severely wounded Stephen. While Stephen is convalescing, she accepts his proposal and agrees to sail for England in the East Indiaman ''[[Lushington]]'', after Jack first refuses her passage in the ''Surprise''. Although the ''Surprise'' leaves earlier, they reach [[Madeira]] later due to weather. Diana, however, chooses to go with a new beau, [[Harry Johnson]], to [[United States|America]], in hopes of making her fortune. She leaves a letter, with Stephen's ring, in Madeira. <br />
<br />
She returns to [[London]] at the beginning of [[Desolation Island (novel)|Desolation Island]] and is once again pursued by Stephen. Under the accusation of spying she flees again to America under the protection of Johnson. Among the friends she leaves behind is American [[Louisa Wogan]], who is sentenced to be transported in the ''[[HMS Leopard (ship)|HMS Leopard]]'' for that very crime.<br />
<br />
=== The Fortune of War through The Hundred Days ===<br />
In ''[[The Fortune of War]]'' Stephen encounters Diana again in [[Boston]], where Jack is held as a [[prisoner of war]]. Diana has grown disgusted with Johnson, and when Stephen takes refuge in her hotel room while on the run from a party of French spies, she hides him and helps him to secure Johnson's secret papers; however, she still resists his renewed proposal of marriage. Jack escapes with Stephen and smuggles Diana away with him. They are taken aboard ''[[HMS Shannon]]'' and are present throughout her battle with the ''[[Chesapeake]]''. ''[[The Surgeon's Mate (novel)|The Surgeon's Mate]]'' shows Diana in a new aspect, labouring selflessly among the men wounded in the battle. The three set out homeward, escaping a determined pursuit instigated by Johnson; but later, when Jack and Stephen fall into the hands of the French (following the wreck of the ''[[Ariel]]'') and are lodged in the Temple Prison in [[Paris]], Johnson himself appears and begins to move all the powers of the secret police against them. Diana pawns her most prized possession, the Blue Peter diamond, in an attempt to buy their freedom. Jack and Stephen escape with the connivance of Talleyrand and Diana accompanies them. At the end of the book she finally agrees to marry Stephen.<br />
<br />
Trouble develops between the couple in ''[[Treason's Harbour]]''. As part of his machinations against the French spy ring in [[Malta]], Stephen has made use of a pretty Italian, [[Laura Fielding]], as agent; Diana comes to believe that there has been an amatory liaison between them, and in outrage at the insult she leaves Stephen and travels to [[Sweden]] with [[Gedymin Jagiello]], a young nobleman who was a fellow-prisoner in Paris. Only at the end of ''[[The Letter of Marque (novel)|The Letter of Marque]]'' are the two reunited, when Stephen follows Diana to Sweden and she learns that a letter in which he explained the situation to her has been made away with by [[Andrew Wray]] to whom Stephen had unwisely entrusted it. <br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin series characters]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Diana_VilliersDiana Villiers2008-05-01T16:23:41Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Link corrected</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Diana Villiers''' is first introduced while riding in the hunt in the first chapter of [[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]. She is a cousin to [[Sophia Aubrey|Sophie Williams]], and lives as an almost penniless widow with her Williams relations. <br />
<br />
Diana is a black haired woman with blue eyes, strikingly tall and slender. Her appearance is of some importance to her and she often capitalizes upon it. She is a woman with a reputation and is perceived to be flirtatious. Both [[Jack Aubrey]] and [[Stephen Maturin]] fall for her; indeed she is a woman who is attractive to many men. She does possess a sense of loyalty, albeit an unconventional one. <br />
<br />
She occasionally hides her talents, such as the ability to play the piano; she is, however, a noted horsewoman. Her business sense is often lacking; she continually hovers between being poor and improvident. Much of her eventual wealth is due to the men she partners.<br />
<br />
== History ==<br />
=== Before Master and Commander ===<br />
Diana Villiers is the daughter of Mrs. Williams's sister, and of age with Sophie. Though [[United Kingdom|English]] by birth, she has spent much of her life abroad, particularly in [[India]], where both her father and her first husband were officers in the British army. She also remembers a stay in [[Paris]] as a girl. <br />
<br />
<br />
{{spoiler| ''Post Captain'' through ''The Hundred Days''}}<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Post Captain through Desolation Island ===<br />
[[Mrs Williams]] views Diana as a threat to Sophie's marriage prospects, and first bribes her with her own horse, and later arranges for her to care for their mad [[Edward Lowndes|Cousin Edward]]. Stephen, although with no inducement from Diana, falls in love with her. Jack, though fond of Sophie, finds little encouragement when Mrs. Williams discovers the state of his finances. He then turns with more affection to Diana, to Sophie's jealousy. Eventually, the two women have an argument, and Diana leaves the Williams household permanently. <br />
<br />
While Jack is stationed in [[The Downs]], Diana pursues a romantic relationship with him, and insists on pure friendship with Stephen. This leads to the men's estrangement and nearly a duel. Eventually, she goes into keeping with [[Richard Canning]], a wealthy married Jewish businessman in the [[East India Company]], and the couple travel to India. <br />
<br />
Jack, now engaged to Sophie, brings ''[[HMS Surprise (ship)|HMS Surprise]]'' to [[Bombay]], where Stephen plans to meet Diana. She is unhappy with her situation, and thus encouraged, Stephen proposes. Upon his visiting her again in [[Calcutta]] for her answer, they are interrupted by Canning, which results in a duel. Canning is killed, whether on purpose or accident is uncertain, after he severely wounded Stephen. While Stephen is convalescing, she accepts his proposal and agrees to sail for England in the East Indiaman ''[[Lushington]]'', after Jack first refuses her passage in the ''Surprise''. Although the ''Surprise'' leaves earlier, they reach [[Madeira]] later due to weather. Diana, however, chooses to go with a new beau, [[Harry Johnson]], to [[United States|America]], in hopes of making her fortune. She leaves a letter, with Stephen's ring, in Madeira. <br />
<br />
She returns to [[London]] at the beginning of [[Desolation Island (novel)|Desolation Island]] and is once again pursued by Stephen. Under the accusation of spying she flees again to America under the protection of Johnson. Among the friends she leaves behind is American [[Louisa Wogan]], who is sentenced to be transported in the ''[[HMS Leopard (ship)|HMS Leopard]]'' for that very crime.<br />
<br />
=== The Fortune of War through The Hundred Days ===<br />
In ''[[The Fortune of War]]'' Stephen encounters Diana again in [[Boston]], where Jack is held as a [[prisoner of war]]. Diana has grown disgusted with Johnson, and when Stephen takes refuge in her hotel room while on the run from a party of French spies, she hides him and helps him to secure Johnson's secret papers; however, she still resists his renewed proposal of marriage. Jack escapes with Stephen and smuggles Diana away with him. They are taken aboard ''[[HMS Shannon]]'' and are present throughout her battle with the ''[[Chesapeake]]''. ''[[The Surgeon's Mate (novel)|The Surgeon's Mate]]'' shows Diana in a new aspect, labouring selflessly among the men wounded in the battle. The three set out homeward, escaping a determined pursuit instigated by Johnson; but later, when Jack and Stephen fall into the hands of the French (following the wreck of the ''[[Ariel]]'') and are lodged in the Temple Prison in [[Paris]], Johnson himself appears and begins to move all the powers of the secret police against them. Diana pawns her most prized possession, the Blue Peter diamond, in an attempt to buy their freedom. Jack and Stephen escape with the connivance of Talleyrand and Diana accompanies them. At the end of the book she finally agrees to marry Stephen. <br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin series characters]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Diana_VilliersDiana Villiers2008-05-01T16:20:44Z<p>Oliver Mundy: New section begun</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Diana Villiers''' is first introduced while riding in the hunt in the first chapter of [[Post Captain (novel)|Post Captain]]. She is a cousin to [[Sophia Aubrey|Sophie Williams]], and lives as an almost penniless widow with her Williams relations. <br />
<br />
Diana is a black haired woman with blue eyes, strikingly tall and slender. Her appearance is of some importance to her and she often capitalizes upon it. She is a woman with a reputation and is perceived to be flirtatious. Both [[Jack Aubrey]] and [[Stephen Maturin]] fall for her; indeed she is a woman who is attractive to many men. She does possess a sense of loyalty, albeit an unconventional one. <br />
<br />
She occasionally hides her talents, such as the ability to play the piano; she is, however, a noted horsewoman. Her business sense is often lacking; she continually hovers between being poor and improvident. Much of her eventual wealth is due to the men she partners.<br />
<br />
== History ==<br />
=== Before Master and Commander ===<br />
Diana Villiers is the daughter of Mrs. Williams's sister, and of age with Sophie. Though [[United Kingdom|English]] by birth, she has spent much of her life abroad, particularly in [[India]], where both her father and her first husband were officers in the British army. She also remembers a stay in [[Paris]] as a girl. <br />
<br />
<br />
{{spoiler| ''Post Captain'' through ''The Hundred Days''}}<br />
<br />
<br />
=== Post Captain through Desolation Island ===<br />
[[Mrs Williams]] views Diana as a threat to Sophie's marriage prospects, and first bribes her with her own horse, and later arranges for her to care for their mad [[Edward Lowndes|Cousin Edward]]. Stephen, although with no inducement from Diana, falls in love with her. Jack, though fond of Sophie, finds little encouragement when Mrs. Williams discovers the state of his finances. He then turns with more affection to Diana, to Sophie's jealousy. Eventually, the two women have an argument, and Diana leaves the Williams household permanently. <br />
<br />
While Jack is stationed in [[The Downs]], Diana pursues a romantic relationship with him, and insists on pure friendship with Stephen. This leads to the men's estrangement and nearly a duel. Eventually, she goes into keeping with [[Richard Canning]], a wealthy married Jewish businessman in the [[East India Company]], and the couple travel to India. <br />
<br />
Jack, now engaged to Sophie, brings ''[[HMS Surprise (ship)|HMS Surprise]]'' to [[Bombay]], where Stephen plans to meet Diana. She is unhappy with her situation, and thus encouraged, Stephen proposes. Upon his visiting her again in [[Calcutta]] for her answer, they are interrupted by Canning, which results in a duel. Canning is killed, whether on purpose or accident is uncertain, after he severely wounded Stephen. While Stephen is convalescing, she accepts his proposal and agrees to sail for England in the East Indiaman ''[[Lushington]]'', after Jack first refuses her passage in the ''Surprise''. Although the ''Surprise'' leaves earlier, they reach [[Madeira]] later due to weather. Diana, however, chooses to go with a new beau, [[Harry Johnson]], to [[United States|America]], in hopes of making her fortune. She leaves a letter, with Stephen's ring, in Madeira. <br />
<br />
She returns to [[London]] at the beginning of [[Desolation Island (novel)|Desolation Island]] and is once again pursued by Stephen. Under the accusation of spying she flees again to America under the protection of Johnson. Among the friends she leaves behind is American [[Louisa Wogan]], who is sentenced to be transported in the ''[[HMS Leopard (ship)|HMS Leopard]]'' for that very crime.<br />
<br />
=== The Fortune of War through The Hundred Days ===<br />
In ''[[The Fortune of War]]'' Stephen encounters Diana again in [[Boston]], where Jack is held as a [[prisoner of war]]. Diana has grown disgusted with Johnson, and when Stephen takes refuge in her hotel room while on the run from a party of French spies, she hides him and helps him to secure Johnson's secret papers; however, she still resists his renewed proposal of marriage. Jack escapes with Stephen and smuggles Diana away with him. They are taken aboard HMS ''[[Shannon]]'' and are present throughout her battle with the ''[[Chesapeake]]''. ''[[The Surgeon's Mate (novel)|The Surgeon's Mate]]'' shows Diana in a new aspect, labouring selflessly among the men wounded in the battle. The three set out homeward, escaping a determined pursuit instigated by Johnson; but later, when Jack and Stephen fall into the hands of the French (following the wreck of the ''[[Ariel]]'') and are lodged in the Temple Prison in [[Paris]], Johnson himself appears and begins to move all the powers of the secret police against them. Diana pawns her most prized possession, the Blue Peter diamond, in an attempt to buy their freedom. Jack and Stephen escape with the connivance of Talleyrand and Diana accompanies them. At the end of the book she finally agrees to marry Stephen. <br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin series characters]]</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Andrew_WrayAndrew Wray2008-05-01T12:30:41Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Spoiler warning added</p>
<hr />
<div>{{spoiler|Desolation Island, Treason's Harbour, The Reverse of the Medal, The Thirteen-Gun Salute}}<br />
<br />
'''Andrew Wray''' is an English civil servant in the employ of the [[Admiralty]]; he occupies the influential post of Second Secretary to the Admiralty as substitute for [[John Barrow]], who is represented as being incapacitated by a long illness. Wray first appears in ''[[Desolation Island (novel)|Desolation Island]]'', where [[Jack Aubrey|Jack]] and [[Stephen Maturin|Stephen]] detect him in cheating at cards. He is on the surface a charming and cultivated man with an informed interest in music, but he is also a spendthrift, a sexual deviant (he frequents a brothel in St. James's, [[London]], opposite [[Black's]] Club) and a traitor who is devoted to [[Napoleon Bonaparte|Napoleon]] and acts as a spy for [[France]]; as a result of this activity he becomes Stephen's enemy as well as Jack's. His animosity towards the latter is aggravated by the attachment between his ill-used wife, the former [[Fanny Harte]], and Jack's protegé [[William Babbington]].<br />
<br />
Stephen, while suspicious of Wray's personal character, long remains ignorant of the man's treason; in ''[[Treason's Harbour]]'' he co-operates with Wray while striving to break up the French spy network in [[Malta]] and disastrously entrusts him with an important letter to [[Diana Villiers|Diana]]. Wray and his fellow-conspirator [[Ledward]] are finally unmasked in ''[[The Reverse of the Medal]]''; the influence of a highly-placed patron, the [[Duke of Habachtsthal]], enables the two to evade arrest and escape abroad. Wray and Ledward are last seen in ''[[The Thirteen-Gun Salute]]'', where they are attached to the French embassy to [[Pulo Prabang]].<br />
<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin series characters]]<br />
<br />
Occasionally Wray's first name is given as Edmund.</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Andrew_WrayAndrew Wray2008-05-01T12:28:46Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Link corrected</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Andrew Wray''' is an English civil servant in the employ of the [[Admiralty]]; he occupies the influential post of Second Secretary to the Admiralty as substitute for [[John Barrow]], who is represented as being incapacitated by a long illness. Wray first appears in ''[[Desolation Island (novel)|Desolation Island]]'', where [[Jack Aubrey|Jack]] and [[Stephen Maturin|Stephen]] detect him in cheating at cards. He is on the surface a charming and cultivated man with an informed interest in music, but he is also a spendthrift, a sexual deviant (he frequents a brothel in St. James's, [[London]], opposite [[Black's]] Club) and a traitor who is devoted to [[Napoleon Bonaparte|Napoleon]] and acts as a spy for [[France]]; as a result of this activity he becomes Stephen's enemy as well as Jack's. His animosity towards the latter is aggravated by the attachment between his ill-used wife, the former [[Fanny Harte]], and Jack's protegé [[William Babbington]].<br />
<br />
Stephen, while suspicious of Wray's personal character, long remains ignorant of the man's treason; in ''[[Treason's Harbour]]'' he co-operates with Wray while striving to break up the French spy network in [[Malta]] and disastrously entrusts him with an important letter to [[Diana Villiers|Diana]]. Wray and his fellow-conspirator [[Ledward]] are finally unmasked in ''[[The Reverse of the Medal]]''; the influence of a highly-placed patron, the [[Duke of Habachtsthal]], enables the two to evade arrest and escape abroad. Wray and Ledward are last seen in ''[[The Thirteen-Gun Salute]]'', where they are attached to the French embassy to [[Pulo Prabang]].<br />
<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin series characters]]<br />
<br />
Occasionally Wray's first name is given as Edmund.</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Andrew_WrayAndrew Wray2008-05-01T12:21:55Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Category added</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Andrew Wray''' is an English civil servant in the employ of the [[Admiralty]]; he occupies the influential post of Second Secretary to the Admiralty as substitute for [[John Barrow]], who is represented as being incapacitated by a long illness. Wray first appears in ''[[Desolation Island]]'', where [[Jack Aubrey|Jack]] and [[Stephen Maturin|Stephen]] detect him in cheating at cards. He is on the surface a charming and cultivated man with an informed interest in music, but he is also a spendthrift, a sexual deviant (he frequents a brothel in St. James's, [[London]], opposite [[Black's]] Club) and a traitor who is devoted to [[Napoleon Bonaparte|Napoleon]] and acts as a spy for [[France]]; as a result of this activity he becomes Stephen's enemy as well as Jack's. His animosity towards the latter is aggravated by the attachment between his ill-used wife, the former [[Fanny Harte]], and Jack's protegé [[William Babbington]].<br />
<br />
Stephen, while suspicious of Wray's personal character, long remains ignorant of the man's treason; in ''[[Treason's Harbour]]'' he co-operates with Wray while striving to break up the French spy network in [[Malta]] and disastrously entrusts him with an important letter to [[Diana Villiers|Diana]]. Wray and his fellow-conspirator [[Ledward]] are finally unmasked in ''[[The Reverse of the Medal]]''; the influence of a highly-placed patron, the [[Duke of Habachtsthal]], enables the two to evade arrest and escape abroad. Wray and Ledward are last seen in ''[[The Thirteen-Gun Salute]]'', where they are attached to the French embassy to [[Pulo Prabang]].<br />
<br />
[[Category:Aubrey-Maturin series characters]]<br />
<br />
Occasionally Wray's first name is given as Edmund.</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/Andrew_WrayAndrew Wray2008-05-01T12:20:05Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Article created</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Andrew Wray''' is an English civil servant in the employ of the [[Admiralty]]; he occupies the influential post of Second Secretary to the Admiralty as substitute for [[John Barrow]], who is represented as being incapacitated by a long illness. Wray first appears in ''[[Desolation Island]]'', where [[Jack Aubrey|Jack]] and [[Stephen Maturin|Stephen]] detect him in cheating at cards. He is on the surface a charming and cultivated man with an informed interest in music, but he is also a spendthrift, a sexual deviant (he frequents a brothel in St. James's, [[London]], opposite [[Black's]] Club) and a traitor who is devoted to [[Napoleon Bonaparte|Napoleon]] and acts as a spy for [[France]]; as a result of this activity he becomes Stephen's enemy as well as Jack's. His animosity towards the latter is aggravated by the attachment between his ill-used wife, the former [[Fanny Harte]], and Jack's protegé [[William Babbington]].<br />
<br />
Stephen, while suspicious of Wray's personal character, long remains ignorant of the man's treason; in ''[[Treason's Harbour]]'' he co-operates with Wray while striving to break up the French spy network in [[Malta]] and disastrously entrusts him with an important letter to [[Diana Villiers|Diana]]. Wray and his fellow-conspirator [[Ledward]] are finally unmasked in ''[[The Reverse of the Medal]]''; the influence of a highly-placed patron, the [[Duke of Habachtsthal]], enables the two to evade arrest and escape abroad. Wray and Ledward are last seen in ''[[The Thirteen-Gun Salute]]'', where they are attached to the French embassy to [[Pulo Prabang]].<br />
<br />
Occasionally Wray's first name is given as Edmund.</div>Oliver Mundyhttp://wiki.hmssurprise.org/phase3/index.php/The_Catalans_A_NovelThe Catalans A Novel2008-01-15T14:08:07Z<p>Oliver Mundy: Article concluded</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:catalans_cover_hcpb.jpg|right|thumb|Cover]]<br />
<br />
<br />
'''The Catalans''' is [[Patrick O'Brian]]'s second adult novel, written at [[Collioure]] and published in 1953. The original British-market title was ''The Frozen Flame'', but the most recent British edition (HarperCollins paperback, 2006) has adopted the more straightforward American title.<br />
<br />
==Plot introduction==<br />
''For more details about the plot, which will contain '''spoilers''', see [[Summary for The Catalans A Novel]]''<br />
<br />
Alain Roig, a doctor working in the Far East, is summoned back to his childhood home on the French-Catalonian border to resolve a bitter family dispute: his cousin Xavier, a widower and a respected lawyer and local politician, has horrified his female relatives by planning to marry his secretary Madeleine, the beautiful daughter of a local shopkeeper. Alain conscientiously probes the motives and intentions of the ill-matched pair. Xavier is revealed as a man who believes, with horror, that he has lost the ability to feel; his wife is long dead, he has found it impossible to love his graceless son Dédé, and Madeleine represents his last hope of a connection with the world of life and emotion. Alain's own detachment is undermined as he re-establishes himself in the once familiar world of fishing-fleet and vintage, whose ancient habits and rituals provide both a background and a catalyst for the dramatic resolution.<br />
<br />
==Major characters in ''The Catalans A Novel''==<br />
*'''Alain Roig''' An idealistic physician<br />
*'''Margot Roig''' Alain's aunt, matriarch of the family<br />
*'''Xavier Roig''' Alain's cousin, lawyer and mayor of Saint-Féliu<br />
*'''Madeleine Fajal''' Xavier's typist and intended bride<br />
*'''Francisco Cortade''' Fisherman and artist, Madeleine's estranged husband<br />
*'''Marcel Dumesnil''' Failed novelist; friend of Francisco<br />
<br />
==Themes and motifs==<br />
This book began as a study of a man without a heart: a decent, civilised, humane person who has to live with the sense that he has no soul. However, Xavier is not the central character for much of the time, and in a larger sense ''The Catalans'' is a novel about pretence: not the raw self-seeking hypocrisy so familiar from Dickens or Thackeray, but a kind of dogged, weary, even despairing falsification of one’s inner life – disguising it where it exists, fabricating an imitation out of spurious ingredients where it does not – undertaken not with any hope of gain but simply for the sake of expediency or for a quiet life or even out of a mistaken sense of duty. All the main characters are affected by this flaw in their own respective ways. The two artists, Francisco the painter and Marcel the writer, show it in its simplest form: the one posing as an unspoiled folk-artist, the other a burned-out case who struggles to uphold his reputation among his relatives by binding up copies of foreign novels with forged title-pages and presenting them as translations of his own works. Alain, for his part, is constrained by the attitudes of those around him to mimic the altruistic and sympathetic manner that they expect from a doctor. Aunt Margot feels herself bound to move against Madeleine, whom she genuinely likes and has hitherto encouraged, because of her belief that Xavier’s liaison will not only create scandal but also destroy his political credibility. And Xavier himself, appalled by the consciousness that he met his wife’s illness with irritation and her death with relief, and that he has never felt anything except disgust for his son, can find no other response than to act out the part of an upright, responsible, charitable citizen; he is certain that these pretences cannot save him from eternal damnation, and yet he cannot let go of them.<br />
<br />
Madeleine herself is not immune; she finds Xavier physically repulsive, but her sense of obligation, born of his real kindness and courtesy towards her, almost results in her binding herself in a marriage which must be joyless and desolate at best. And yet, in an ironic way, Xavier is right in thinking that she may point the way into a better and happier world. She has been brought up with tenderness and affection, and this has set its mark on her: as a child ‘she was dirty . . . untruthful and dishonest. But being less battered, she was less dirty, untruthful and dishonest than the rest.’ In short, without being in any way a saint, she is set apart from the petty concerns and obsessions of the people about her; she has a kind of rightness which is beyond analysis – a concept which O’Brian will explore again with the character of [[Diana Villiers]].<br />
<br />
===The authorial position===<br />
<br />
In this book, O’Brian for the first time achieves the distinctively detached and impersonal narrative voice of his mature work. There is a peculiarity about this which may easily escape notice: it has the remoteness and impassivity of a deity, but not the omniscience. Instead of knowing and seeing everything, this narrator chooses to co-opt the senses and the mind of one character at a time, seeing and hearing with that person’s eyes and ears and thinking that person’s thoughts; all the other personages of the story are seen only from the outside, as the chosen character may be presumed to perceive them or as any observer present at the scene might have perceived them. In the Aubrey-Maturin novels, this treatment is almost always bestowed on [[Stephen Maturin]], occasionally on [[Jack Aubrey]], but very rarely on anybody else. (The model for this approach seems to be Jane Austen; in ''Mansfield Park'', for example, she uses Fanny as a medium for the most part, just as O’Brian uses Maturin.) In the Catalans the focus is generally on Alain, although Madeleine has a chapter (the second) largely to herself, while in the final pages the spotlight shifts to Xavier with startling effect, turning what might easily have been an over-tidy romantic ending into something both poignant and disturbing.<br />
<br />
==Echoes from the author's life==<br />
During his long soliloquy in chapter IV, Xavier describes his struggles to educate his deeply unsatisfactory son. The monstrous Dédé ('[H]e felt more malice than I should ever have supposed a child could contain') is clearly a pure invention, but when Xavier accuses him of being affectedly 'quaint' and giving 'a performance of himself as an arch, winning little boy', he closely echoes occasional complaints made in O'Brian's Welsh diaries, as quoted by his stepson and biographer Nikolai Tolstoy, concerning his own son. Equally true to life is the passage where Xavier, son of a bullying father, reveals his deep shame at having in turn become a domestic tyrant.<br />
<br />
Less distressingly, the novel makes extensive use of the scenery and society of the Franco-Catalan border where O'Brian had settled in 1949. In Alain's struggles to carry the basket of grapes down the hillside (chap. VIII), O'Brian reproduces his own enthusiastic if not entirely competent efforts to share in the work of his new neighbours, just as he had done in the sheep-shearing episode in ''[[Testimonies]]''.<br />
<br />
==Footnotes==<br />
The place-name Prabang, used for the territory (apparently somewhere in present-day Malaysia) where Alain has been stationed, will reappear in ''[[The Thirteen-Gun Salute]]''.<br />
<br />
===Alain foreshadows Stephen . . . ===<br />
In chapter 3 (page 64, HarperCollins paperback), Alain reacts to the sight of a pretty girl (not Madeleine) with a strikingly Irish idiom:<br />
<blockquote><br />
'My God,' he said, internally. 'Here's freshness; here's bloom. Here's the lovely sin of the world.'</blockquote><br />
<br />
It seems that already, fifteen years before ''[[Master and Commander (novel)|Master and Commander]]'', O'Brian had perceived something oddly compatible between Erin and Catalunya - a union which was to give birth to the character of [[Stephen Maturin]].<br />
<br />
===. . . and Jack===<br />
From the same chapter (ibid., p.70)<br />
<blockquote>At this moment the phoenix (a suspicion that he might be able to make an epigram about cuckoos, phoenixes, and fornication drifted across the surface of Alain's mind) was bent over a heap of papers among the ruins of their dessert.</blockquote><br />
In much the same way, [[Jack Aubrey]] often trembles on the edge of a pun or witticism which he cannot quite formulate to his satisfaction.</div>Oliver Mundy