In Master and Commander, the first of the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian, Jack gets his first command. It's the Sophie, a seventy-eight-foot sloop with a crew of more than eighty. It's a wonder where they stuck them all. It's also the beginning of the friendship between Jack and Stephen Maturin, who becomes the ship's surgeon. They don't get off on the right foot, however, as Maturin castigatesJack for tapping his hand out of rhythm during a chamber concert. Rather than come to blows, they discover they have several things in common, a love of music being the foremost.
Jack's first responsibility is to convoy a group of his Majesty's merchant ships, so they put to sea after first trying out some cannon in the bow that threaten to drive the ship's carpenter into severe apoplexy when he sees how the shock from the guns threatens to pull apart the little ship's seams. The most startling revelation to the modern reader is the number of offenses for which a seaman, or officer, could be put to death. Every first Sunday, the Captain was required to read the Articles of War, which delineated all these heinous crimes such as threatening an officer, or failing to proceed against the enemy with adequate haste, or any one of a number of miscellaneous other offenses, each of which would result in the death penalty.
This volume should be read first, for O'Brian clearly explains the nomenclature and functions of each part of a working eighteenth-century sailing vessel. The entire ship is explained, from bowsprit to spanker, and a description of the crews living quarters is given. Patrick O'Brian wrote in the introduction to Nelson's Navy: "...One’s pleasure in a sailor's account of his voyage is so very much enhanced if one can follow the more technical passages. This is even more true where the navy of Nelson's day is concerned, for by the time of Trafalgar the sailing man-of-war ... had reached its apogee, an immensely complex machine requiring extraordinary skill to handle and, of course, a copious vocabulary to speak of its parts and function." O'Brian knows his vocabulary.
Living quarters were cramped. Each sailor had only a hammock, which he stung in the fourteen inches of space assigned to him. When Maturin exclaims how surely that space is not enough for a man to sleep in, he is reminded that actually the amount of room is double that for about half the crew is on watch at any given time, providing double the space.
Stephen soon discovers much to his consternation, that Sophie's first lieutenant, is one James Dillon. He and Dillon are members of the United Irishmen, an organization of Protestants and Catholics trying to unite Ireland and responsible for a recently thwarted rebellion. One never knows how its former members might react to being in close quarters with others, especially as internal strife and numerous betrayals of former friends and comrades had rived the society. Jack's intolerance is revealed as he admits to Maturin his hatred of the dreaded Papists Unfortunately, he creates a potentially difficult situation
by making derogatory comments about Catholics to the crew before discovering Dillon and many of the men are Catholic, and he did so mean to get off to a good start with at least his first lieutenant!
A recurrent theme of the Aubrey/Maturin series is the meaning of friendship, and that theme is certainly developed in Master and Commander. Maturin and Dillon have a chance to explain their feelings about the Irish republican movement after they are removed to a prize ship that must be sailed into port, Dillon to command and Maturin to help deliver a baby born to the French captain's wife. Maturin explains, and perhaps we can also assume this is O'Brian speaking, that the bloody results of the French Revolution have soured him to groups of any kind. "'I would not cross this room to reform parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium... - but man as part of a movement or a crowd is ... inhuman... the only feelings I have are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.... Patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile."'
O'Brian's characters are human, with all that implies. They make mistakes, act stupidly on occasion, suffer from greed and ill temper. So many modern action stories have superhuman heroes who suffer only from occasional bouts of pseudo-remorse for their actions, explained in nauseating psychobabble,never suffering from anything remotely resembling a crisis of conscience. Sign of our times perhaps.
O'Brian also his a good deal of fun at the expense of the eighteenth-century stuffed-shirt upper class. Consider the following scene at a rather hoity-toity, mixed company dinner party: "Mr. Ellis was clearly very much at home in Captain Harte's house, for without having to ask the way he walked to the sideboard, opened the lead-lined door and took out the chamber-pot, and looking over his shoulder he went on without a pause to state that fortunately the lower classes naturally looked up to gentlemen and loved them, in their humble way' only gentlemen were fit to be officers. God had ordered it so, he said, buttoning the flap of his breeches ' and he as he sat down again at the table he observed that he knew one house where the article was silver - solid silver."
