A Satisfying Voyage Into the Past Guided by O’Brian’s Sure Hand

The old master has us again in the palm of his hand. Patrick O’Brian, the octogenarian Anglo-Irish writer, has spun the 20th novel in his Aubrey/Maturin series, and a fine thing it is, gossamer in language, as always, and forceful in plot, character and action, as always. (And--perhaps--it is the final adventure for this globe-trotting duo, as rumors abound that this will be O’Brian’s last novel.)

The legion of his fans don’t have to be told who O’Brian’s characters are. For others, a brief introduction is in order. Jack Aubrey is a bluff English captain of a man-of-war in the royal navy during the Napoleonic wars. Stephen Maturin, a learned Catalan, is his friend, his ship’s surgeon, a naturalist of no mean renown, and a spy to boot for the English against the hated Napoleon.

For 19 volumes they have sailed the oceans of the world, fighting the French and their allies, fighting the Americans in the War of 1812, fighting to preserve Great Britain’s dominance of the seas. Now, in “Blue at the Mizzen,” the hated Boney has been defeated at Waterloo and exiled to St. Helena. The world’s seas are safe for the royal navy. What’s a mere post-captain (Aubrey’s rank) to do? Can he ever make admiral, his life’s ambition, in a world at peace?

So sunnily does this novel begin that you know by its end that O’Brian is going to disappoint neither Aubrey nor us. Aubrey and his crew have captured a Moorish galley laden with gold, and the prize money is about to be divided and handed out to the crew: “The Surprise, lying well out in the channel with Gibraltar half a mile away on her starboard quarter, lying at a single anchor with her head to the freshening northwest breeze, piped all hands at four bells in the afternoon watch; and at the cheerful sound her tender Ringle detached once more on a private errand by Lord Keith, cheered with the utmost good will, while the Surprise’s crew turned out with a wonderful readiness, laughing, beaming and thumping one another on the back in spite of a strong promise of rain and a heavy sea running already.”

That first paragraph itself explains much of the charm and allure of O’Brian’s prose. In structure and diction, it is a modern version of the 18th and early 19th century prose--Dr. Johnson, Jane Austen and the like--in which O’Brian steeped himself as a child, and which in these novels forms the carrying case for his tales. The sentence opens with an arresting description; moves, with easy elegance, to the lovely 18th century semicolon, and then flows happily on to its anticipatory conclusion.

Of course, it is not elegant prose alone that captures the reader. There is imbued in the novels the naval lore of square-rigged fighting vessels, of which the USS Constitution, now moored in Boston Harbor, is the outstanding American example. (Aubrey once encountered her; he found her a frightening and admirable example of modern American technology.)

To get an accurate sense of what is going on in the opening scene you have to know that “starboard” means the right side of the ship as you stand looking toward the bow; that by lying at a single anchor, the ship always swings into the breeze; that a freshening breeze is an increasingly powerful one; that four bells in the afternoon watch is 2 p.m. and so on. These are the easy ones. Later you may encounter lobscouse, loblolly-boy (or -girl) or orlop and blue ointment.

O’Brian’s descriptions of the vast and powerful sea in all its moods and latitudes are as fine as any in the language; in their physicality, they remind you of Conrad. In “Blue at the Mizzen,” the Surprise encounters the dreaded doldrums and the fearsome surge-driven ice at the very southern tip of South America. Above all, perhaps, O’Brian holds his readers with his deft, loving and often amusing development of his characters, principally Aubrey and Maturin, but also their wives and children, and their naval and intelligence masters--some stupid and some corrupt, some shrewd and wise, in London.

O’Brian takes us, intelligently and benignly, into a distant world and makes it come vibrantly alive. It is enough to say that in this book, despite the peace, Aubrey and Maturin brilliantly help the Chilean insurgents achieve independence in their war with Spain, and as a reward--and this won’t spoil the tale he tells--Aubrey gets his admiral’s appointment. From now on, he will fly the blue pennant of an admiral from the mizzen of his flagship. Is this a sure sign that the book is O’Brian’s last--that he has decided to reward his faithful character before it’s too late? Only O’Brian, Aubrey and Maturin know for sure--and none of them is telling.