Patrick O'Brian's Navy: The Illustrated Companion to Jack Aubrey's World [Hardcover]

Richard O'Neill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 4, 2003

From the moment that Master and Commander, the first of Patrick O'Brian's sequence of 20 novels about the 19th century British Royal Navy officer Jack Aubrey and his surgeon colleague Stephen Maturin, was published in 1970, critics hailed his work as a masterpiece of historical recreation. Called "the best historical novels ever written" by the New York Times, the books have sold millions of copies. This first full-color illustrated companion to the Aubrey-Maturin series, timed to coincide with the release of the blockbuster Twentieth-Century Fox film adaptation starring Russell Crowe, explains the fascinating physical details of Jack Aubrey's fictional world. An in-depth historical reference, it brings to life the political, cultural, and physical setting of O'Brian's novels. Annotated drawings, paintings, and diagrams reveal the complex parts of a ship and its rigging, weaponry, crew quarters and duties, below-deck conditions, and fighting tactics, while maps illustrate the location featured in each novel.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Both visually impressive and highly informative, this large-format introduction to Napoleonic naval warfare focuses on Patrick O'Brian's splendid Jack Aubrey saga, which it presents as a major work of English literature. In fact, parts of this book (including the material on Lord Cochrane, the original model for Jack Aubrey's character) will be more useful to O'Brian's fans than to the lay reader. However, the book also depicts, in words and pictures, the political background of the Napoleonic Wars, the development of the major navies, the sailors' life at sea (where weather and disease killed far more men than battles did) and the design and construction of the wooden sailing warship. The volume also details the training of officers, fleet actions, frigate actions (prominent in the career of both Cochrane and his avatar) and the role of piracy, slave trading and mutiny in the maritime history of the era. Although not uniformly well reproduced, the illustrations are outstanding, including many period items, and the book as a whole makes a fine treat O'Brian's many fans.
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About the Author

Richard O'Neill is a writer and editor who has specialized in military history for the past 40 years. He is the author of Suicide Squads, a history of the weapons and missions of the Special Attack units of World War II. He has contributed to many books on weaponry and military history, including The Complete Encyclopedia of 20th Century Warships, The Vietnam War and, most recently, An Illustrated History of the Royal Navy. He was a major contributor to Lands And Peoples, a multi-volume educational work, and wrote Presidents of the United States for the Facts America series. He is also the author of The Middle Ages and World War II for the "Historical Facts" illustrated series.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Running Press; 1st edition (September 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0762415401
• ISBN-13: 978-0762415403
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 11 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #28,523 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #13 in Books > Professional & Technical > Transportation > Ships > History
  • #39 in Books > History > Military > Naval

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

176 of 178 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful companion to Patrick O'Brian's fiction, September 3, 2003

By 

Bruce Trinque (Amston, CT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Patrick O'Brian's Navy: The Illustrated Companion to Jack Aubrey's World (Hardcover)

"Patrick O'Brian's Navy: The Illustrated Companion to Jack Aubrey's World" is one of those books that doesn't really have an author. Richard O'Neill is listed as the Consulting Editor, but the Editor and Indexer is Philip de Ste. Croix, and there are a number of "Contributors" including David Miller, who has his own Jack Aubrey-related book coming out soon ("The World of Jack Aubrey").

This is a handsome coffee table-size volume, about 150 pages long, and heavily illustrated. The illustrations may be its strongest point - hundreds of them, mostly contemporary to Jack Aubrey's era and mostly reproduced in vivid color. I have seen many of them before, but usually in black-and-white, so even just on this score, "Patrick O'Brian's Navy" is an attractive addition to a historical nautical library. And there are some modern illustrations as well, usually in the form of diagrams to show complex information such as sail and rigging designations, crew assignments, and the arrangement of watches. Other data is conveyed in tabular form, like those for uniform details, prize money distribution, and crew organization for various ship classes.

Although the primary focus is upon the Royal Navy, there are also chapters devoted to what might be called the geo-political world of the Napoleonic Era. There is a conscious effort to tie all this to Jack Aubrey and the O'Brian novels, with the text, detailing historical events in which Jack took part (including those before the start of the book series) and occasionally providing sidebars titled "Through Aubrey's Eyes" that relate particular subjects to volume and chapter of the novels. Although the overall level of information presented cannot equal that in Brian Lavery's "Nelson's Navy", this is nonetheless an interesting compendium of facts and anecdotes.

There are also two short addendums: "A Cast of Characters" listing the major people and ships in the O'Brian novels and describing their actions and fates, and a Glossary of nautical terms and slang.

49 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This'll Shiver Your Timbers, August 12, 2004

By 

Bill Marsano (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Patrick O'Brian's Navy: The Illustrated Companion to Jack Aubrey's World (Hardcover)

By Bill Marsano. So far as publishers are concerned, they ain't over till they're over. I speak of (and they profit from) World War II and the Age of Fighting Sail. The former recently gave us "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors," a fine (and rare) account of our Navy's noblest victory; now the latter brings us "Patrick O'Brian's Navy"--which is not, please note, just for O'Brian fans.

All in all the book does an excellent job of conveying the context--from the British side--of the Royal Navy during its years of near-constant war with the French. It's large in format, heavily and handsomely illustrated with contemporary paintings, engravings, watercolors and cartoons as well as modern diagrams and maps. All are generously displayed. The text sometimes struggles to work its way around them, especially as there are frequent over-sized quotations and framed text blocks ("sidebars" containing abstracts from contemporary diaries and news reports) that occupy their own spaces.

Battle coverage is terrific. The Royal Navy's great triumphs are well detailed, as are several notable if not-so-well-known small actions, chosen for their display of aubreyesque daring and dash. And Lord Cochrane, one of the primary inspirations for Aubrey, gets extensive copverage all by his heroic self. The Royal Navy's internal world is also very nicely explored--ratings and ranks; manning and management (and mismanagement: mutinies are included); rigs and rigging, and--just when we run out of Frenchmen, pirates and slavers.

Organization is something of a problem. There's a tendency, once an picture-heavy design is established, for the text to be straitjacketed, for subjects be treated equally but inadequately, because the designers allot them just so much room and no more, and the text must be squeezed or cut to fit. Here, for example, gunnery has so little space that we get but a glance at the 32-pounder and never hear of carronades until another section many pages later. As a result, weaponry is merely sketched. Likewise with that frequent O'Brian phenomenon, the "weather gauge"--not well explained, and divided between two sections. Medicine at sea? Considering the importance of Stephen Maturin in the O'Brian series, it's almost ignored.

The book doesn't explain, and none can, the incredible fighting spirit of the British sailor, be he Jack Tar or Dick Nastyface. They were badly paid, ill fed and worse housed; they got little respect ashore or afloat; they risked death for mutiny and yet in the middle of a mutiny rallied round so soon as the French poked a masthead above the horizon--and then they'd beat the tar out of them more often than not.

Best thing to do is read this book through and then re-read the Aubrey-Maturin series all over again.--Bill Marsano is a professional writer and editor, and a generally boatful person.

73 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Do not read this book! Yet., February 8, 2006

By 

Joeyjojo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Patrick O'Brian's Navy: The Illustrated Companion to Jack Aubrey's World (Hardcover)

This book is maddening. Yes, it is very cool, all the history you can take in. Nice pictures and what not.

My BIG CONCERN is that the author has no clue. He puts spoilers in every nook and cranny of the book. Here is a made up example that recounts my experience: While giving the book a pre-bedtime read, I come across an interesting illustration, the caption reads something along the lines of "The victorian sailor enjoyed drinking, too bad Jack Aubrey's favorite sailor dies from drinking in the book you are about to read." or "Spying in the Royal Navy was always a concern, for example, in the 100 days, Preserved Killick's mother turns out to be a spy for Spain."

No warning, momentus events and dark secrets get spilled at random.