A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O'Brian's Seafaring Tales [Hardcover]

Dean King (Author), John B. Hattendorf (Author), J. Worth Estes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1997

More than 50,000 devoted Patrick O'Brian fans have made A SEA OF WORDS their companion book of choice. In response to passionate reader demand, Dean King adds hundreds of new definitions and new illustrations and background essays referenced in O'Brian's clipper ship adventure sagas, including two new novels.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"To any disoriented lubber who needs to take a quick bearing on Aubrey's world of staysails and sternposts, it will be a useful compass."--The Economist

"Dean King's lexicon will charm cultists."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"An outstandingly useful passkey to the wooden world of Britain's Royal Navy in the great age of sail."--Sea History

"A gem of a book."--Minneapolis Star Tribune

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

John B. Hattenborf is a professor of maritime history at the United States Naval War College. J. Worth Estes, Ph.D., is a professor of pharmacology at Boston University and a specialist in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century maritime medicine.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 483 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company; 2nd edition (August 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805051155
• ISBN-13: 978-0805051155
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,108,281 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

An award-winning and best-selling author of nine non-fiction books, Dean King has chased stories across Europe, Asia, and Africa. His goal is to draw you into a rich, nuanced, and accurate historical narrative that allows you to live with the characters, to feel their pain, suffering, striving, and joy, and to grow with them. He prefers that you decide what you think about the characters' decisions and actions, rather than telling you what to think. He rides the camels, climbs the 14,000 foot passes, walks the yardarms,and tracks down far flung sources to bring you the sounds, smells, sights and insights you need. Then he writes and edits until his knuckles have no skin, his elbows ache, and his family is looking for him, all to give you pleasure in lean, melodic, and meaningful prose. In the end if he makes you desperate to take his book and hit your favorite easy chair or crawl into bed and curl up with it, he's happy. If you learn something or feel changed, then it's all the better.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

113 of 114 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gives the series a new dimension, December 28, 1999

By 

Doug Briggs - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O'Brian's Seafaring Tales (Paperback)

Readers who want to know everything there is about everything there is in the Aubrey/Maturin series will treasure this book. It isn't simply a glossary of seafaring terms, but provides bios of the more important naval figures of the time, the flora and fauna of Maturin's interests, geographical places encountered, some of which no longer bear the names of those times . . . In short, A Sea of Words describes just about everything in O'Brian's seafaring tales we're not likely to know.

What is this bark that Stephen dispenses for certain ailments? Why, the bark of the Chinchona tree -- it contains quinine, says A Sea of Words, while also describing the many other medical terms he slings around.

Jack attempts several times to give Stephen a grasp of the weather-gage, as it relates to ships in battle, but never so clearly as Dean King's description, which includes both the advantages of the weather- and lee-gages.

It's all here, and even if one had the encyclopedias and all the other essential references needed, which I seriously doubt would be found even in a big-city library, why go shopping when one book will do?

For those sorely needed maps, get Harbors & High Seas by King and Hattendorf, and you're all set.

78 of 79 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Get with the lingo, June 26, 2001

By 

tertius3 (MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O'Brian's Seafaring Tales (Paperback)

This book is a great reference for all interested in the age of fighting sail, or readers of nautical fiction. The heart of the book is an immense lexicon or dictionary of nautical terms and (British) naval history and leaders during the times of the French Revolution and Napoleonic world war about A.D 1800. Specifically geared to the Patrick O'Brian novels about Captain Aubrey and his surgeon-spy Maturin, this can be read with benefit also to understanding any other authors in the genre. The lexicon is prefaced with Hattendorf's chapter on the organization of the British Navy from top to bottom. It specifies the career ladder from landman to Admiral of the Red, basic British vs. French battle tactics, and overviews the War of the French Revolution (1793-1803) and the Napoleonic Wars (1805-1815). A time line of these wars is appended. Another chapter by Estes discusses the state of contemporary medicine. Perhaps most immediately useful is a brief section illustrating the standing and running rigging of square-rigged ships, and their sail plans, the most confusing part of all for a lubber. In light of Maturin's cover as a naturalist, a chapter on the state of naturalist studies before Darwin would be a useful addition to a future edition (as would a section about the competition to determine longitude accurately).

If you are new to nautical matters, and begin the Forester, Kent or Woodman series of novels with the start of the hero's career, I suggest you not consult this work until later so that you taste the same initial confusion as any raw young midshipman. This is a useful rite of passage for anyone falling in love with nautical fiction: if you care enough to learn the challengingly obscure terms you will be hooked. You will also learn the origins of many slang expressions, like scuttlebutt, three sheets to the wind, bye and large, bitter end, squared away, cut and run, scuttled, doldrums, son of a gun, at liberty, etc. The geographical companion book, Harbors and High Seas, could be acquired anytime, but I don't consider it as useful as this book. (Note: my review is based on a 2nd edition [green cover], which did not contain the error Desiree mentions in her review.)

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not exactly required, but definately fun to read, May 23, 2000

By 

Hollister Herhold - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O'Brian's Seafaring Tales (Paperback)

If you're the kind of person who finds joy in reading about language and colloquialisms of the past, this is a great book. It also contains a fair amount of background on many of the historical (real) characters from the Aubrey/Maturin books, as well as many geographic locations visited from the novels. A brief chronology of the wars during the age of sail (Napoleonic, War of 1812, etc) is quite useful. I'm also fairly impressed with its completeness with the obviously strange ones - "Drowned Baby", for instance. (It's a dessert.) You don't need it to understand the language of O'Brian's books, but you'll probably have more fun if you bring "A Sea of Words" along for the ride.