Jack Aubrey Commands: An Historical Companion to the Naval World of Patrick O'Brian Review

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(More customer reviews)Brian Lavery is the author of the thoroughly excellent "Nelson's Navy", praised by Patrick O'Brian as the most nearly royal road to knowledge about the Royal Navy of the 1793-18115 period he knew. Lavery's new book, "Jack Aubrey's Commands: A Historical Companion to the Naval World of Patrick O'Brian", is quite evidently tied to the release of the film "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World", based upon O'Brian's novels -- the book's foreword, after all, was written by Peter Weir. the director of the movie. But the book is at least as much directed towards the readers of O'Brian's novels as to viewers of the film (and more so, I would argue), and it should be equally enticing for those simply interested in that historical era. To be sure, Lavery's "Nelson's Navy" is an excellent reference book that contains far more detailed information than the present work, but "Jack Aubrey's Commands" is written in a more approachable style for the general reader, with a text that is meant to be read as a continuous whole, rather than as a collection of details and essays. Its particular strength lies in the numerous and lengthy quotes taken from contemporary sources, making the narrative more vivid and easy to relate to a living world long vanished. In this regard, "Jack Aubrey's Commands" serves as a companion to Lavery's own "Nelson's Navy" as well as to the novels of Patrick O'Brian.
Someone recently asked me whether it was better to buy "Jack Aubrey's Commands" or Richard O'Neill's recent "Patrick O'Brian's Navy: Jack Aubrey's World". Putting the obvious answer of "Buy both of them!" aside (and assuming that the reader already has Lavery's "Nelson's Navy" or feels that this earlier work is as yet too formidable to approach), then my recommendation would depend on the reader's personal preferences. Both volumes contain a good detail of information about the Royal Navy of Jack Aubrey's era. O'Neill's book is especially strong in the area of excellent period illustrations, Lavery's in the direction of narrative strength. The first is perhaps best for repeated browsing, the latter for a straightforward read.

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No fiction writer of modern times has captured the worldof wooden walls, broadsides, and the press gang as successfully asPatrick O'Brian. The twenty books in the O'Brian canon featuring thelives and adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and his confidant, navalsurgeon Stephen Maturin, have been lauded across the world for theirblend of classic storytelling, historical accuracy, and inspiredcharacterizations. In this new work respected naval historian BrianLavery explores the historical framework of the O'Brian novels byexamining the facts behind the grand narrative and putting the keyepisodes in context while detailing naval life in the era of Nelsonand Napoleon. With well over a hundred illustrations, the bookpresents contemporary plans, drawings, engravings, maps, andphotographs of museum artifacts that have inspired age-of-sailnovelists and moviemakers. Introducing the book is a foreword by PeterWeir, director of the upcoming film of O'Brian's novel Master andCommander. Avid age-of-sail fans will not want to miss this colorfullydetailed complement to the O'Brian series.

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The World Of Jack Aubrey Review

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(More customer reviews)I am a newcomer to the world of Aubrey and Maturin, and like a novice I have found myself somewhat overwhelmed by the overwhelming amount of nautical and naval detail contained in the book. I sought this book out because I thought it might help make that world a bit clearer. To a very large extent, this handsome though slender volume did the trick. The book provides a to-the-point introduction to the world of naval combat during the Napoleonic age, and I definitely have a clearer idea of the kinds of ships that were around at that time. I read through the book once, and I anticipate going to it again as I work my way through the rest of the Aubrey/Maturin volumes (I'm currently nearing the end of H.M.S. SURPRISE, the third book).
Despite having learned from the book, I was somewhat disappointed that it didn't cover more. I can think of two chapters that I would very much have profited from. The first would have been a chapter dealing with the "stuff" of a ship. This volume does this slightly in talking of the sailing rig of a typical boat, but I would have liked more detail. What weight was the rope used on these boats and was it hemp? Where did they store extra rope. How did they deal with the water needs of the ship's inhabitants, how much was allotted to a sailor each day, and how often did they need to resupply water and food? The second chapter that I would have liked to see would have been one on the mechanics of sailing. I am not a sailor, and have never been on a sailboat (despite living in Chicago alongside Lake Michigan). I would have benefited enormously from a chapter explaining how a ship of the British navy moved about on the water. Navigating ships is a major feature of the novels, and I would very much have loved more explanation of how this is done. I'm sure many books deal with this, but this volume's lacking this means that it is not a one-book-deals-with-all resource. I was also somewhat saddened that there wasn't some larger discussion of surgical practice on a ship, perhaps a selection of surgical instruments, though I must admit that the title refers only to Aubrey, not Maturin.
Despite the rather circumscribed subject matter of the book, this is a very helpful introduction to anyone like myself who knows little about the early 19th century British navy and would like to learn more. The book itself is very attractively done, and the illustrations are great. There is a host of great photographs of ships. I especially like the few occasions when ships were depicted that had appeared in the novels I have read so far.In short, this is a very fine little book, but I'm not sure that an Aubrey/Maturin fan couldn't do better.

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Here's a stunningly illustrated guide to the ships, weapons, uniforms, and equipment described in Patrick O'Brian's sequence of 20 popular novels about the 19th-century British Royal Navy officer Jack Aubrey and his surgeon colleague Stephen Maturin. Called "the best historical novels every written" by The New York Times, the books have sold more than three million copies and inspired the epic film adaptation starring Russell Crowe. A must for any O'Brian enthusiast, this volume boasts striking full-color photographs illustrating a vast array of equipment, medals, weapons, and other objects, and is unique in that many of the featured items are actual battle relics, such as the coat Admiral Nelson wore at the Battle of Trafalgar -- complete with bullet hole.

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Heart of Oak: A Sailor's Life in Nelson's Navy Review

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(More customer reviews)James McGuane's "Heart of Oak" is a marvelous visual journey into, as the subtitle has it, "A Sailor's Life in Nelson's Navy". The book is filled with photographs of artifacts from British nautical museums (plus a number taken aboard HMS Victory and at other naval-related sites), pictures not of static, dead objects on dusty museum shelves, but photographs artfully dynamic, almost as if the tools portrayed were set down a few minutes ago and a horny-handed seaman might return shortly to resume his work. Many of the most fragile artifacts, such as a leather bucket and handmade trousers of light sailcloth, were recovered from the wreck of HMS Invincible lost in 1758, decades before the era of Horatio Nelson and Jack Aubrey, but nonetheless strongly representative of what would have still been found aboard a Royal Navy ship during the Napoleonic Wars. The range of articles pictured is remarkable: a tar brush, pistols and boarding pikes, sailmakers' fids, a surgeon's bleeding bowl, cable laid rope, a glim (the thick glass lens set into a powder magazine enclosure to admit light but not flame), a seaman's knit woolen cap, a ship's lead, hourglasses (well, 28-minute glasses, to be accurate), a square wooden plate with raised rim (keeps the food in place when the ship rolls), sailors' knives, a cat-o'-nine-tails, a pressgang's cosh, and much, much more. "Heart of Oak" is not a highly structured analysis of the physical accoutrements of nautical life two centuries ago, but it is a bit of a time machine, transporting the modern student of naval history (or a lover of the novels of Patrick O'Brian or C.S. Forester) back into that vanished world.

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