Master and Commander
1969
- unabridged audio - fiction/general
- fiction
- historical - general
- sea stories
- fairy tales, folklore & mythology
- fiction, sea stories
- aubrey, jack (fictitious character), fiction
- maturin, stephen (fictitious character), fiction
- napoleonic wars, 1800-1815, fiction
- fiction, historical
The story
This is book 1 in the Aubrey/Maturin series. Here is the maiden voyage of O'Brian's acclaimed Aubrey-Maturin series, which follows the unique friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. O'Brian renders in riveting detail the life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the roar of broadsides as the great ships close in battle. - Publisher.
What it’s like
Dense, confident period prose, full of sea idiom and dry humour, with the rhythm of officers talking over dinner and sailors swearing on the lower deck. The sensory world is wind, tar, salt pork, lamplit wardroom panelling and the creak of timber under sail, with wide open ocean and weather described as closely as the men's conversation. Pacing is leisurely and digressive, with long stretches of routine seamanship and easy companionship broken by sharp bursts of action, including a fierce naval engagement with the roar of broadsides. Violence is present and unsentimental: floggings and battle wounds are described plainly, without gore for its own sake. The mood is warm, witty and wistful, a steady comradeship between two very different men that deepens slowly over the voyage. It suits a long rainy weekend, a slow evening with a glass of something, or an audiobook on a long drive. It is for readers who love historical fiction, the tactile texture of older seafaring life, and friendships built through shared work and music.
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