Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(38)
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3 star:		(6)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.)

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.

This is an excellent reference guide. However, the 2nd edition of this book has a major printing error. Most of the terms beginning with "C" and the beginning of the "D" entries are missing, and there's a reprinted set of pages from later in the book inserted instead.

Avoid the 2nd edition!

Subtitled "A Lexicon and Companion to the Complete Seafaring Tales of Patrick O'Brian," this is an absolutely marvelous book, the Third Edition of which includes references to all twenty of the Aubrey-Maturin novels. It scores high in the first test given any alphabetically organized reference book, viz., in looking up an entry, ... There's a wide variety of nautical jargon, period medical terminology, the characters' references to natural history and music, and the foreign words and phrases that crop up in the novels. O'Brian describes a large number of real personages, too, all of whom are succinctly biographed. There's also a pretty detailed timeline for the period 1793-1818, a narrative essay on the ins and outs of the Napoleonic wars, a most illuminating discussion of naval medicine and surgery in Maturin's day, and a nice series of period illustrations of ships and boats for those who can't tell a frigate from a corvette, nor a barge from a launch. This is definitely a book to keep at hand while you work your way through the series.

Anyone interested in the any aspect of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic period needs this book. Although it was written as a companion for the Patrick O'Brian's novels (Master and Commander was the recent movie based on the novels), it can be used for better understanding of any of the Royal Navy series (Hornblower, Drinkwater, Kydd, etc.), by anyone who watches the Hornblower movies, or anyone who simply has an interest in maritime studies in the age of sail. The book starts out with sections on the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, naval medicine, maps, and ship diagrams. You'll learn the names of all the sails and decks on a ship. Then there is a large section, about 350 pages of definitions in dictionary form. It's all here-ship ratings, maps, compass points, parts of ships and cannons, biographies, battles, ranks, and everything else you might encounter as you read the novels or watch the Hornblower movies. If you don't know what a cox'n is, you'll find it here. This book is great not only as a reference, but has given me hours of browsing pleasure. It really opens up a whole new world that this landlubber doesn't understand from first-hand experience. It's a great book--I can't say enough about it. It can be picked up in paperback for pocket change and it's worth its weight in gold. You will be pleased with this book!

When I started to read "Master and Commander", I was completely lost in the "sea of words", the nautical vocabulary. This book is an INVALUABLE resource when reading the O'Brian books.

This book has diagrams and charts and photos, explains naval medicine and other things, but it's best trait is the "a to z" dictionary of nautical terms and phrases used in the O'Brian books.

EXCELLENT!

The one annoyance about this book (for people like me, who came to Patrick O'Brian's stories through my own devices, at least) is that, by the time you hear tell off this book, you are several volumes into Mr O'Brian's exquisite series... by which time, you've generally muddled through (with whatever miscellaneous assortment of secondhand reference works you have inherited from elderly relatives) and figured out, by yourself, what a "futtock shroud" might be, or (through sheer perseverance) discovered what a "Greek pollacca" looks like, and much of what this gem of a book could have given you in a flash is already lost!

If you ever find yourself in the privilaged position of being able to recommend Patrick O'Brian's magnificant novels to anyone who is so benighted as to have not yet heard of them, don't leave them in the lurch - funish them with a copy of this most excellent tome, to help them on their way! After all, you will remember the number of times you felt compelled to run to your meagre collection of reference sources to find out what O'Brian writes about with such unswerving authority. Even if you cannot gain from it youself, you know that this is _the_ book to have.

I cannot write too highly of it (and I am an able to write too highly of many things when the spirit takes me :). But, To give a copy of "Master and Commander" to a new initiate of Mr O'Brian without also furishing them with a copy of this book is, quite frankly, to condemn your fellow potential Aubreyites to the same fate as yourself - Heck, even I didn't know what a Dutch Galliot looked like until I bought this book!

Dean King has done all lovers of naval history novels a great service with this book. Aimed specifically at the Aubrey/Maturin series, it nevertheless provides an invaluable wealth of detailed information about the whole of the period around the turn of the 19th Century.

Not only does it translate obscure Naval terms, it also explains obsolete Georgian phraseology; describes major naval battles; eminent naval personalities & statesmen; Latin & French phrases common during the period; explanations of classical references; medical & natural history terminology - in short, all that you need as a companion to naval literature.

I got this book after reading all the Aubrey/Maturin series - if only I'd had this at the time, I could have saved myself hours of searching through multiple reference books.

A MUST for all naval history buffs.

After years of reading historical fiction, I thought I'd gotten a good grasp of nautical terms. After a friend gave me this book, I realized how wrong I'd been. You can keep it at your side while reading Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey novels, or read it on its own. Fascinating, informing, illuminating.

If someone asked me about reading the Jack Aubrey novels, I'd suggest they buy this book with the first installment of the series.