Harbors and High Seas: An Atlas and Geographical Guide to the Aubrey-Maturin Novels of Patrick O'Brian

Master and Commander Mastering the Mediterranean

As Patrick O'Brian readily confesses, he modeled many of the events of the novel Master and Commander on the remarkable Mediterranean cruise of Lord Cochrane (later, tenth earl of Dundonald) aboard the Speedy, a dwarfish brig that Cochrane once called "little more than a burlesque on a vessel of war." Consider Cochrane's account of his assignment to the Speedy: "The vessel originally intended for me by Lord Keith was the Bonne Citoyenne, a fine corvette of eighteen guns, but the brother of his lordship's secretary happening at the time to arrive from Gibraltar . . . that functionary managed to place his brother in one of the finest sloops in the service, leaving to me the least efficient craft on the station." The similarity of this true event to the circumstances surrounding Aubrey's appointment to the Sophie in Master and Commander is no mistake.

Like the Speedy, the Sophie must return a pair of 12-pounders to the ordnance wharf because her timbers cannot bear the concussion, and she too can carry only ten tons of water. Both brigs ship the fore-topgallant yard of the Gonoreaux as a main yard and plane the yardarms to fool port officials. And like the Speedy, the pint-size Sophie, a mouse among elephants, begins her cruise at Port Mahon, on the island of Minorca, and goes on to wreak havoc in the western Mediterranean.

In 1800 Port Mahon is a town bustling with war. It is a place where men and women of varied backgrounds and allegiances have been thrust together. The stamp of England, nonetheless, has been firmly imprinted on the port, since the British have occupied Minorca throughout much of the eighteenth century. In fact, the hotel where Aubrey stays was built in 1750, when the British controlled the island, and is named after The Crown, an inn in Portsmouth. It is in Port Mahon that Aubrey and Maturin meet. Their mutual love of music brings them together and, despite their very different natures, they do have more than a little in common: both are broke, both are out of work, and both are in need of an opportunity. It comes on April 1, 1800, when Aubrey is made captain of the Sophie and then induces Maturin to ship as his surgeon. At first assigned the lowly duty of convoying merchant ships, the Sophie sails east from Minorca along the 39th parallel with a dozen merchant ships to Cagliari, a fortified seaport on the southern coast of Sardinia. From Cagliari she escorts another convoy of merchant ships north to Leghorn (Livorno), a major Tuscan seaport, which is neutral and open to ships of all nations. In the Genoa roads, Aubrey gets his break when Lord Keith, Admiral of the Blue and commander in chief in the Mediterranean, orders the Sophie to cruise the French and Spanish coasts down to Cape Nao to menace their commercial ports and vessels. In short order Aubrey, like Cochrane, takes full advantage of this command and makes his overachieving ship an infamous nuisance to the enemy.

Spanish merchants convince their government to send the 32-gun xebec-frigate Cacafuego after Aubrey. But he, like Cochrane, fools the bigger ship by pretending to be a Danish brig with a plague-ridden crew. In both instances the deception is so successful that the smaller ship might have seized the opportunity to attack her predator, but in both the captain refuses to take this perhaps morally unfair advantage, raising eyebrows as to his courage among his less conscientious crew.