It is what is vulgarly known as bro lit. If that drives you away from the action, if you are what Lucky Jack Aubrey would call shy, then so much the worse for you, the prize of a d- good read will elude you and you will fall on the ‘impermissible lee shore’ there to perish on the rocks of genre. Not the slightest trace of what the First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill called ‘rum, bum, and concertina’. Maturin will admit to the rum ration, an astonishing half pint per diem along with grog which lead to falling from the rigging and gives another sense to ‘a tight ship’. As a scientist cum philosophe he was appalled by this customary ration which in ‘Post Captain’ the second in the series caused Jack to dive overboard to rescue Bonden swimming 50 yards up to him and grasping him by the pig tail held him fast till a boat was launched. He’s done that a few times in his career having the skill of natation unknown in the common tar who would not wish to prolong his agony if washed overboard in a storm. Maturin does not know how to swim which is uncanny as he knows everything else in this sublunary domain. However he is no dismal sciolist rather an amateur or lover of all branches of knowledge. In short he is a polymath and a foil to Aubrey who is a perfect John Bull, sentimental and also violent, given to boozy venery and we are glad when he finds his Sophie a rich prize in herself with £10,000 towing. He though is broke ‘caus the prize factor who was minding his money has indulged in major defalcation. The comedic aspect of Jack skulking on land to avoid bum baliffs and finding sanctuary in a quarter of London where they cannot tap him with their cudgels. Everything you will read in O’Brien’s books are founded on historical fact and the bold engagements of Jack Aubrey are founded on the real thing.
The writing is excellent and varies from the excogitations of Maturin on everything to the naming of parts of rigging, naval lore, and the rectification of the trim of sailing ships by Jack, a highly skilled seaman who has been at sea from the age of 14. But away from the sea to the land and the first sight of the divine Sophie perhaps not coincidentally the name of the first sloop under Jack’s command. Sniggers in the focsle.
“Sophia, the eldest, was a tall girl with wide-set grey eyes, a broad, smooth forehead, and a wonderful sweetness of expression - soft fair hair, inclining to gold: an exquisite skin. She was a reserved creature, living much in an inward dream whose nature she did not communicate to anyone. Perhaps it was her mother's unprincipled rectitude that had given her this early disgust for adult life; but whether or no, she seemed very young for her twenty-seven years. There was nothing in the least degree affected or kittenish about this: rather a kind of ethereal quality - the quality of a sacrificial object. Iphigeneia before the letter. Her looks were very much admired; she was always elegant, and when she was in looks she was quite lovely.”
I read some of them years ago and although the adventures are free standing and good as that to read them in their order is the better course.
Most excellent.
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