This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against a thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of a life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the roar of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.
- ISBN10 0393307050
- ISBN13 9780393307054
- Publish Date 14 November 1991 (first published 1 May 1972)
- Publish Status Inactive
- Out of Print 13 February 2022
- Publish Country US
- Imprint WW Norton & Co
- Format Paperback
- Pages 464
- Language English