The Far Side of the World

What can I say about all of Patrick O’Brian’s ‘AubreyMaturin’ series of novels that hasn’t already been said? You are deeply immersed in the historically accurate, early 18th century British Navy, with a cast of characters that are so very human, and at times, also heroes in their own right. I wish I could do justice to this canon of 20 wonderful novels. For the record, there is a 21st unfinished novel, that Patrick O’Brian was working on when he passed away. It has also been published. I own the complete series in hardcover, and also with Amazon’s ‘Kindle’. That’s how much I love this series of classic novels. PS: All the novels are in chronological order, so you’re just going have to get them all!

If you have seen the movie, the movie combined story lines from several of this series, including this one. I highly recommend you go to the first book in the series, Master and Commander.As you read through all 20 books of the series, you will recognize scenes and characters from them cobbled together into the movie.

Over the course of six months, I read the entire Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O’Brien. It never got old. O’Brian cleverly tells you details of 18th-19th century British naval life by having the experienced characters, who would never need to explain this to each other, explain this to the complete nautical novice of Dr. Maturin. There is rich contrast between characters who have known each other for some time, some as intimate friends, or between members of family, and the interesting, and occasionally untrustworthy strangers they come upon, all against the grand portrait of major historical events.

Having not only an interest in history, but in science as well, it’s enjoyable to see Dr. Maturin’s frustration with old salt’s superstitions and snake oil medicine even while his own understanding of science, medicine, and natural history would be seen as archaic and primitive by our perspective.

The contrast between the sizable life-loving, highly social if occasionally clueless Jack Aubrey with his quiet, private, highly observant and often sang-froid friend is one of the best parts of this series. We get to see the best and worst of each of them, bolster and weighed down by the different best and worst of the other.

Both Jack and Stephen bumble along in this volume. They are bound to catch up,with an American frigate which was preying on British whalers. I knew that whaling was lucrative in the early days, but it could make ones fortune without being shot at. They both manage to get marooned, Stephen not seemingly to notice the real and present danger they are in.
Invincible ignorance could no be enlightened as OBrian writes.

“The Far Side of the World” is the tenth of twenty novels in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series set about the early nineteenth-century Royal Navy. It is a rollicking adventure of divers entertainments without–and in this way it is unique among the novels up to this point–ever featuring a significant sea battle. Those unfamiliar with the novel but have seen Peter Weir’s 2003 film, “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” should beware that one can descry in the movie version only the faint palimpsest of the novel.

Picking up from the last adventure, “Treason’s Harbor,” Jack Aubrey, after some uncertainty, remains assigned to the frigate HMS Surprise, of which he first took command in the third novel, and after a series of other commands returned to in the eighth installation, “The Ionian Mission.” “Treason’s Harbor” ended with something of a cliffhanger, but those threads–including Aubrey’s concern that unjust if not irrational rumors that he was carrying on with a married Italian woman aboard Surprise would end with the husband’s challenging him–are rather quickly resolved or otherwise disposed of before the present story gets underway.

In “The Far Side of the World,” it’s still the War of 1812 and the American frigate USS Norfolk has been disrupting British whaling. Captain Aubrey is tasked with engaging Norfolk and so protect the whalers. Joining him on this mission is of course his good friend and ship’s surgeon, Stephen Maturin. Aubrey also takes on a new master, Mr. Allen, who has a not inconsiderable knowledge of the whaling trade; a clergyman, Mr. Martin, a naturalist and so kindred soul to Maturin; and Mr. Hollum, a midshipman whose career has terminally stalled and for whom Aubrey feels, against better judgment, sorry.

Aubrey chases Norfolk along the east coast of South America, around the perilous waters off Cape Horn, to the Galapagos, and on to the South Pacific. Aubrey, Maturin, and crew face down a number of challenges, including the infamous Doldrums, a prow-destroying lightning strike, a shipboard affair, mysterious disappearances, encounters with colorful whalers, and a nearly catastrophic if yet humorous rescue by South Sea islanders. The final pages build up to what feels like another cliffhanger, but most readers will find the conclusion very satisfying.

If the series felt like it was flagging a few installments back, this novel shows that the series has abundant energy left. There are plenty of tropes repeated from earlier novels that will delight fans of the series, and yet there is also considerable freshness to these new adventures that will tickle the fan and new reader alike.

This is a novel where plot has definitely come second to historical detail and verisimilitude. If you want to know the detail of early nineteenth century whale hunting and butchering then thus the book for you. However, Herman Melville didnt need this to craft a great story, something that Patrick OBrian must have forgotten on this occasion.

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