Few places reveal a more concentrated view of human life than a 19^th century man-of-war in the British Royal Navy. These incredibly complex machines were more or less self-sustaining villages, as well as floating castles. With master craftsmen and vast stores, they could stay at sea for months at a time. Varying in size, and with crews ranging from 40 to 800, these ships were a large part of the reason that French isn’t currently the national language of the United Kingdom.

While many will remember the 2003 cinematic epic Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, most do not know that it was based on a series of novels written by English author Patrick O’Brian. Of the 20 novels — the 21^st was incomplete when the author died in 2000 — most were bestsellers. Remarkably, however, few lovers of historical fiction have read the novels, though they have a stout and loyal fan base that is still quite active two decades after the last, unfinished, novel was published.

I was introduced to the series in 2019 by my older brother, Zan. A former Navy pilot, he has long shared my love of historical fiction; the “Hornblower” series and the Master and Commander movie were staples of our childhood. Anyone who enjoys the interplay of relationships, social classes, friendship, and conflict of the Austen novels — or the Dickens and Brontë novels for that matter — will be thrilled to find a depth of plot and character equal to these great novelists in the works of O’Brian.

The first novel in the series, Master and Commander, begins with the two main characters — the Catalan-Irish physician and naturalist Stephen Maturin and the daring naval Lieutenant Jack Aubrey — meeting at a concert on the British-occupied island of Minorca. The meeting nearly ends in a duel, but the novel itself ends with the two sailing into a desperate battle against the French-allied Spaniards. From that point, the series sets sail into 19 more novels that examine the many complexities of life, from the social to the ethical, and does so in a way that entertains remarkably well.

Shortly after beginning the series, I found a group on Facebook called “The Patrick O’Brian Appreciation Society” and truly cannot say I have ever encountered a more charming group of individuals online. Like their nautical heroes, the fans of the series have their own terminology; my personal favorite is that they refer to each completion of the series as a “circumnavigation.” I am now halfway through my fourth circumnavigation, though only the excellent audiobooks read by Simon Vance have enabled me to get through them so quickly. They have been the background noise to my first years of motherhood, and I knew that when my son was born in 2022, he would recognize my voice, my husband’s, and the voice of Simon Vance.

O’Brian writes detailed and historically accurate accounts of the 19^th century ideas on natural science, naval warfare, and ethics and is able to convey contemporary speech in a manner that makes it both foreign and perfectly understandable. To call it “world-building” is not quite right because really what he is doing is “world rediscovering.” Regardless, he does it in a way that not only sheds light on the world of two hundred years ago but also gives a modern audience new tools in order to examine the problems of our own day. 

With infinite charm and skill, O’Brian brings us into the world of ship timbers creaking at night, bells chiming the nautical hours, the boom of cannon, the frigid cold of the high northern latitudes, the perils of a lee shore, and the calm nights of a steady wind in the Mediterranean when all the foremast jacks dance to the hornpipe on the forecastle. It is the fresh breath of sea air most of us need in our stale modern lives, and one I hope will soon encourage you to set forth on your own first circumnavigation.