Master and Commander

First lines

The music-room in the Governor's House at Port Mahon, a tall, handsome, pillared octagon, was filled with the triumphant first movement of Locatelli's C major quartet.

About this book

This is book 1 in the Aubrey/Maturin series. Here is the maiden voyage of O'Brian's acclaimed Aubrey-Maturin series, which follows the unique friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. O'Brian renders in riveting detail the life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy: 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. - Publisher.

Themes & subjects

About the author

Patrick O'Brian

1914 – 2000