Post Captain

 

The Complete Aubrey/Maturin Novels Volume 1: Post Captain by Patrick O’Brian (2016 Harper Collins hardcover 478pp)

 

The adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin continue. And if you haven’t read the first book in the series don’t start here – there is little or no introduction to the characters for the new reader as the book pretty much assumes you’ve read the previous instalment.

Peace breaks out and we find our heroes without a ship living an idyllic rural life and socialising with a nearby household of young women. The main characters’ affections towards the same pair of said women becomes a major source of tension between them that continues on for most of the book.

Aubrey’s finances have collapsed and the debt collectors are after him, he spends most of his time trying to avoid being recognised in public in case he is seized and thrown in jail. Maturin, meanwhile, has been working in secret for the Admiralty. Taking part in secret missions to Spain in the hope that nation could be weakened if war comes again, something he keeps secret from Aubrey.

The pair run away from their problems to France but then war breaks out again and they find themselves walking part-way across the country in disguise to avoid being interned there.

Back in England, Aubrey is given command of an experimental vessel the HMS Polychrest. This new ship isn’t the best handling but he sails her into combat and succeeds in his efforts. The crew however are on the verge of mutiny and this leads Aubrey to take desperate action.

The final section of the book sees Jack finally given his long sought-after promotion to Post Captain but lacking an available ship of his own he is given the role of acting captain on HMS Lively, a top-of the-line frigate. Discovering the ship and its crew has seen little real action he raids French ports and eventually takes part in a battle that could alter the course of the war.

A worthy sequel this book however had me scratching my head occasionally. Its written in a different style than its predecessor. While that book was a straight forward narrative, “Post Captain” tells its story with a lot of internal dialogue, letters and journal entries. We are never a few pages away from learning the current mental states of the main pair. There’s also the odd way O’Brian has chosen to move things along quickly – where some writers would spend a chapter describing a new setting or the passage of time, he changes things dramatically from one sentence to another. Giving the reader something of a mental ‘whiplash’ feeling. Other times I felt so immersed in the terminology and ye olde language in a passage that I totally missed that something major had occurred. Maybe its just me but I had to read entire paragraphs again to understand what happened.

Still an excellent read, putting you into another time and place once more.