Post Captain is the second historical novel in the Aubrey–Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1972. It features the characters of Captain Jack Aubrey and naval surgeon Stephen Maturin, and is set in the early 19th century during the Napoleonic Wars.

During the brief Peace of Amiens, Aubrey and Maturin live in a country house in England, where they meet women with whom they fall in love. The mores of courtship restrict both men as to making marriage proposals. Then their lives are turned upside down when Aubrey loses his money due to decisions of the prize court and a dishonest prize-agent. To avoid seizure for debt, they proceed through France to Maturin's property in Spain. When the war begins afresh, Aubrey has a command aboard HMS Polychrest, gaining fewer prizes yet succeeding in his military goals. He is eventually promoted and is given temporary command of the frigate HMS Lively while its captain is ashore. The emotions of his love life interfere with his ways at sea, showing him sharply different in his decisiveness at sea compared to his clumsiness on land.

The novel was received well at its initial publishing, but received more and better notice after its re-issue in 1990. That much of the story is set on land drew some to consider it O'Brian's homage to Jane Austen, one of his favorite authors.

The Treaty of Amiens was signed 25 March 1802 by Joseph Bonaparte and the Marquess Cornwallis as a "Definitive Treaty of Peace". The consequent Peace of Amiens lasted only one year, ending on 18 May 1803. It was the only period of general peace in Europe during the so-called 'Great French War' between 1793 and 1815. Captain Christy-Pallière, whom Jack and Stephen visit at Toulon, was a real French Navy officer who did command the naval base at Toulon, though not in 1803.

For a few hundred years beginning in the 14th century, the Duchy of Lancaster was not subject to the King's laws, including pursuit for debt, having its own courts, laws and power of decision. Savoy was part of the lands in that Duchy. Though it was adjacent to the City of London and to Westminster, the Liberty of the Savoy, sometimes called the Liberties of the Savoy, was a safe haven from debt collectors acting under the King's law until sometime in the 19th century, after the Napoleonic Wars. The author explained this from his own knowledge at a publisher's web page.

The novel describes the political tensions between Lord Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty with the support of Prime Minister Pitt, and the Whigs, whose First Lord had been Earl St Vincent, immediate predecessor to Lord Melville. The Whigs charged Lord Melville with misappropriation of public funds. The novel posits that Melville could not properly defend himself because the funds in question were associated with the secret appropriations for intelligence gathering while he was Treasurer in the Admiralty. At the end of the novel, Lord Melville still holds his position while the impeachment and trial occur in the House of Lords. Lord Melville was acquitted in real life, but did not hold the office of First Lord again; his son Robert held the post later in the Napoleonic Wars. Like his father, he is portrayed as being in favor of the fictional Captain Aubrey.

The last action in the novel is based on a real action, the Battle of Cape Santa Maria on 5 October 1804, in which four British frigates – , , , and – successfully intercepted a Spanish flotilla carrying gold from South America, leaving from the mouth of the River Plate in present-day Montevideo, Uruguay. Captain Hamond, later Sir Graham Hamond, 2nd Baronet, was not in fact a member of Parliament and was in command of Lively during the action, taking the Spanish ships as Aubrey does in the novel.

Literature

In a conversation with MacDonald, Stephen Maturin argues about the various qualities of the Gaelic poet Ossian's writing and authenticity. This references similar controversy which had arisen during the period about the true authorship of James Macpherson's translation of his epic cycle, and continues to be questioned today in literary circles. In this same conversation, MacDonald references the Roman legal principle "falsum in uno, falsum in omnibus",

The process of reissuing the novels initially published prior to 1991 was in full swing in 1991, as the whole series gained a new and wider audience, as Mark Howowitz describes in writing about The Nutmeg of Consolation, the fourteenth novel in the series, which was first published in 1991.

<blockquote>Two of my favorite friends are fictitious characters; they live in more than a dozen volumes always near at hand. Their names are Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, and their creator is a 77-year-old novelist named Patrick O'Brian, whose 14 books about them have been continuously in print in England since the first, "Master and Commander," was published in 1970.

O'Brian's British fans include T. J. Binyon, Iris Murdoch, A. S. Byatt, Timothy Mo and the late Mary Renault, but, until recently, this splendid saga of two serving officers in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars was unavailable in this country, apart from the first few installments which went immediately out of print. Last year, however, W. W. Norton decided to reissue the series in its entirety, and so far nine of the 14 have appeared here, including the most recent chapter, The Nutmeg of Consolation.</blockquote>

Literary significance and criticism

:"One of the finest seafaring novels of the Napoleonic wars." – R. W., Taranaki Herald (New Zealand), on Post Captain

Mary Renault had high praise for the novel:

<blockquote>Master and Commander raised almost dangerously high expectations, Post Captain triumphantly surpasses them. Mr O'Brian is a master of his period, in which his characters are finely placed, while remaining three-dimensional, thoroughly human beings. This book sets him at the very top of his genre; he does not just have the chief qualifications of a first-class historical novelist, he has them all. The action scenes are superb; towards the end, far from being aware that one is reading what is, physically, a fairly long book, one notes with dismay that there is not much more to come....A brilliant book.</blockquote>

Library Journal found this to be a "rich blend of adventure, romance, and intrigue", reviewing an audiobook version read by John Lee and "Recommended for most collections."

Frank Prial wrote about Post Captain, in an article in The New York Times about the author in 1998, that "The Aubrey-Maturin series has been said to rival the sequential novels of Trollope and Anthony Powell. Mr O'Brian is particularly pleased when he is compared to Jane Austen, whom he reveres as the finest of all English novelists. First editions of most of her novels share shelf space in his small library here with first editions of Gibbon and Dr. Johnson and a battered but still useful 1810 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. The second book of the series, Post Captain, set mostly in country houses and as much a novel of manners as a sea story, has been said to be Mr. O'Brian's homage to Ms. Austen."

In an article published in a maritime law journal, Alison Sulentic proposes that "As inviting as Master and Commander may be, however, it is Post Captain, the second novel in the series, that unveils O'Brian's genius and stakes his claim to recognition as the author of "the best historical novels ever written." The intricate interweaving of plot lines that trace the personal and professional fortunes of the main characters crosses many of the more traditional categorizations of popular fiction." Sulentic assesses the plot in some detail against moral philosophy and the notions of 'the law as it is' and 'the law as it ought to be', and the development of Aubrey and Maturin in Post Captain, saying on page 588, "Over the course of Post Captain, both Jack and Stephen come to know wisdom in a way that profoundly alters the approach each takes to the intersection of law and morality." She mentions on page 589 the felicitous choice of names, perhaps a "deliberate conceit", for the ship Aubrey loves, HMS Sophie and the woman he loves, Sophia, and the name Sophia meaning wisdom.

References

Bibliography

Further reading

  • Maps for Post Captain, in The Patrick O'Brian Mapping Project.
  • Guide for the Perplexed by A G Brown. Translations into English of foreign phrases within this and the other novels.
  • The Gunroom of HMS Surprise. General resources for the novels, including links, reviews and historical background.