Book review: POB

I've just finished re-reading "The Surgeon's Mate", which is the last in my cyclic re-read of the entire Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin series, which started with "The Ionian Mission". I haven't read The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey (and don't intend to) and indeed Blue at the Mizzen feels somewhat unfinished to me. This is about the third time I've read them: the first in some kind of order as we found them (possibly prompted by a review of The Wine-Dark Sea when we were in Stevenage many years ago), then in some other order; and now again.

To get some criticism out of the way: all the characters, and sometimes the text, say "very true". There is a good deal of repetition, if you read all the books. This is almost inevitable - the holystoning of the decks and the rhythm of life on the ship need to be in each book to make it self contained, but is the same in each. It's almost like Homer's "wine-dark" for the sea, except Homer only does it for phrases. I coud live without the repetition of cur-tailed though. But there's a lot of good, dry, humour. Of the plots, on the re-read, what becomes somewhat tedious is the necessity for JA to lose all his fortune on a cyclical basis; had he continued a smooth rise, he would have been - as he himself says at some points - the captain of a 74 which would have been dull; and POB has to perform some gyrations to get him back into frigates.

The evocation of the time appears good, and I don't think I can ask much more or judge it. I have been to Port Mahon in a family holiday many years ago; I could wish I'd had these book available then, to add colour. The stories I say are good: quite uniformly so, none are poor; either POB was very good or he was most diligent in the archives. At first (as wiki says) the years pass by quite quickly. Then POB realises he has a good thing on his hands, but can't turn back the clock, so time has to become elastic.

JA loves the service, and presumably POB did too after reading and writing so much; and so we have sometimes a defence of the various less desireable features: impressment-aka-slavery most notably. This is mostly not successful, other than "it is a hard service" and the general tenor of the times. Most striking is the harsh punishment meted out to the common sailors compared to the kid-gloves treatment the officers get. JA is complicit in this, in that he gives or causes to be given ships to people manifestly not fit to command and who he knows will oppress the crew; but his eternal excuse is that he is bound by precedence. That said, I can easily believe it was better than shore life for those with a tolerable captain.

SM, at various periods, is addicted to laudanum, to coca-leaves, to whatever. He muses on this, but to no great effect; it may simply be more grist for the story. Does POB have anything to say, in all this? Almost entirely he is only telling a story, I think, together with a certain nostalgia for those days; and perhaps a recommendation for us to consider re-adoption of some of their ways¹.

Towards the end, Bonden is suddenly killed. This seems a touch abrupt; perhaps POB needed to show that people near JA could die as well as incidental characters. And Bonden hadn't really developed much, other than learning to write: he remained the omni-competent omni-cheerful lower-deck sailor. Killing Diana was also abrupt, as was SM's rebounding to Christine; but again, DV had become a touch boring. Perhaps POB wanted to wander off further into biology.

Of the two chief characters, by the end of the books both have become omni-competent in their own fields, perhaps implausibly so. At various points in the books it is necessary for JA's ships to run aground or suffer some disaster; but this is invariably the fault of some subordinate. And sometimes events have to occur: Chilean independence cannot happen out of sequence, so that whole plot has to fail rather abruptly, the fault neatly being placed on overly democratic followers of Rousseau.

Image: the POB-shelf, with - to show my literary credentials - Proust to the right. Bottom right, LeGuin to C S Lewis; left, the incomparable Divine Endurance and Flowerdust; top left Pratchett and Pullman, trending into Ransome and Potter.

Incidentally, having read POB, I read some C S Forester expecting to find it disappointing; but it was not.

2024: The Yellow Admiral, The One Hundred Days, Blue At The Mizzen

I re-read these three; I can't remember exactly why I started at TYA.. But by "happy" chance these showcase POB's failing powers. TYA is decent, though largely concerned with enclosures; THD is a little sketchy and the focus on the fauna of the Atlas mountains drags; BATM I feel more convinced is a series of sketches of episodes, pulled into a single story, but with the edges very much not smoothed over; too many disasters at sea befall the poor Surprise to fit into one book.

Refs

* Hommage a POB.

Notes

1. At one point - early, I think - he quotes an earlier author: "by learning to obey, they are learning to command". By which I take him to mean acceptance of an heirarchical society, with the implicit deal of the possibility of progress upwards. This is a heavy idealisation of those times.