FREETHE AUBREY-MATURIN CHRONICLES: MASTER AND COMMANDER / POST CAPTAIN / HMS SURPRISE VOLUME 1 EBOOK Patrick O'Brian,Robert Hardy | 9 pages | 01 May 2009 | HarperCollins Publishers | 9780007319305 | English | London, United Kingdom The Ships of Jack Aubrey Like any stout-hearted Royal Navy midshipman or lieutenant, Jack Aubrey hungered for glory and for command of a ship. Indeed, the two were vitally connected, for the first was a path to the second and the latter -- with luck -- could bring the former. In the very first chapter of the first volume in Patrick O'Brian's magnificent series of novels about Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin, Aubrey obtained his first real command on April 19, And glory followed. This web page explores all of Jack Aubrey's vessels from the small sloop-of-war HMS Sophie of which he takes command at the beginning of Master and Commander through more than a dozen other sloops, frigates and ships-of-the-line until we leave him in The Final, Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey on the ship-of-the-line Suffolk, having raised his flag as rear admiral. And for any who might protest at the imprecision in the title of this page, the Sophie being only a brig and thus not truly a ship by the definition of the sea, I must fall back upon the sage words of that eminent nautical authority, Stephen Maturin: "Let us not be pedantical, for all love! For more than a decade I have been an avid fan of the nautical novels of Patrick O'Brian, an enthusiasm growing out of my long-standing interest in naval warships of the "Age of Fighting Sail" perhaps first sparked by childhood visits to "Old Ironsides". Oftentimes while reading these marvelous books, I have reached for the reference volumes on my shelves to better understand exactly what kind of vessel Jack Aubrey was commanding in the book in hand. And often I thought how convenient it would be to have a single source available to quickly find the basic information about the vessels, to look at their plans, and to compare one ship with another. These web pages are my effort to provide such a source of information. In many cases, Patrick O'Brian put Jack Aubrey aboard real Royal Navy vessels of the era of the Napoleonic Wars, although frequently the author altered the actual histories of those ships to fit the world of his fictional hero. At other times, ships commanded by Aubrey had clearly identifiable historical prototypes, but with names and circumstances changed for the novels. For these historical vessels, whether commanded by Aubrey under their actual name or one fictional, a description of that ship is given below, accompanied by basic technical data and an image of the actual ship plans. Occasionally O'Brian invented a warship without obvious specific precedent. In those cases, a genuine vessel of appropriate design has been selected for presentation, again with data and plans. I wish to thank Don Seltzer, a fellow listswain of the Patrick O'Brian Gunroom and of John Berg's Sea-Room, for his help by reviewing the material for presentation on these web pages and for providing me with some nuggets of information that otherwise would have escaped my eye. Although the hull dimensions generally remained essentially unchanged throughout a ship's career except in cases of major rebuilds of a type not applicable to any of Aubrey's commandscrew size and armament sometimes did substantially alter over years and decades of service. Gun types and quantities especially shifted around the beginning of the 19th Century when short-ranged but powerful carronades replaced many of the smaller-caliber long guns carried on quarterdecks and forecastles. Thus, the weaponry information presented here is not necessarily correct in all details for the period of Jack's Aubrey's command of the ship in question, although usually the main battery of guns is the same a notable exception is HMS Surprise which under Aubrey's command typically carried pound long guns, not the 9-pounders of the original armament scheme nor their pound carronade replacements. Nominal crew sizes were adjusted from time to time and, of course, ships frequently served with crews under authorized strength. These are: Length - The length of the Lower Deck the "lower deck" on a ship-of-the-line was that deck upon which the heaviest guns were placed; for frigates it was the deck immediately below the deck holding the main battery of cannons. This is the rough equivalent of "length between perpendiculars" for modern ships. Keel - Not the length of the actual keel, but an artificial number used for calculations of tonnage. Breadth - The "moulded" breadth at the widest part of the hull, "moulded" meaning the measurement was made to the outside of the hull frame, but inside the external planking. Hold - The "depth in hold" was another artificial number sometimes used in calculating tonnage. The dimensions cited for ships built for the Royal Navy are "as built" figures, if available; otherwise they are from the design plans; those for foreign prizes are "as built" figures taken during a survey after capture. By the late 18th Century the standard formula for calculating tonnage was known as the Builders Old Measurement in which the Length minus three-fifths of the Breadth was multiplied by the Breadth times one-half the Breadth and then divided by the number 94, yielding the calculated tonnage of burthen and explaining why the tonnage of vessels of this era usually include an odd fraction with "94" as the divisor. An equivalent technique The Aubrey-Maturin Chronicles: Master and Commander / Post Captain / HMS Surprise Volume 1 to multiply the Keel times Breadth times one-half Breadth and then divide by The significance of such tonnage The Aubrey-Maturin Chronicles: Master and Commander / Post Captain / HMS Surprise Volume 1 is that they permit a standard for a comparison of the relative overall size of different ships. The ship plans come from several sources designated hereafter with page citations as:. Click here to access the plans. You may return via the "Ships of Jack Aubrey" button. There's not a moment to lose! HMS Sophie. Towards the end of the novel, the first book in the series, Sophie is captured on the Spanish coast by a French squadron led by Admiral Linois. Although the activities of the Sophie and her dimensions and armament were modeled closely on those of real-life HMS Speedycommanded by Thomas, Lord Cochrane, the quarterdeck - unusual for a small sloop - was taken from HMS Vincejocaptured from the Spanish navy in Indeed, In the novel the Sophie is pointed out by one naval officer as being the former " Vencejo " The Aubrey-Maturin Chronicles: Master and Commander / Post Captain / HMS Surprise Volume 1 an alternative spelling - although in fact the Vincejo kept its original name while serving in the Royal Navy until captured by the French at Quiberon Bay in The Speedylike the fictional Sophiewas captured in by Linois. HMS Polychrest. After several months of service in the English Channel, the Polychrest is severely damaged in a raid on a French port and sinks soon thereafter. The physical form of the Polychrest except for the secret weapon The Aubrey-Maturin Chronicles: Master and Commander / Post Captain / HMS Surprise Volume 1 taken from the Dart class of sloops. The sliding keels, originally designed by Captain Schank, were The Aubrey-Maturin Chronicles: Master and Commander / Post Captain / HMS Surprise Volume 1 upon a number of small Royal Navy vessels around this period, although problems with leaking centerboard cases perhaps discouraged wider experimentation. Unlike the Polychrest with its extraordinary leeway and a propensity for missing stays, the real HMS Dart and her sister ship Arrow performed satisfactorily during their The Aubrey-Maturin Chronicles: Master and Commander / Post Captain / HMS Surprise Volume 1 Navy service. The Dart was broken up in The poor sailing qualities of Polychrest and perhaps the notion of a new secret weapon were likely taken from HMS Projecta much smaller vessel than the Dart and Polychrest with a very shallow draft to carry a new design of howitzer into coastal waters. The Aubrey-Maturin Chronicles: Master and Commander / Post Captain / HMS Surprise Volume 1 Project was broken up in after only five years of service. HMS Lively. With the Lively Jack takes part in the interception of a Spanish treasure squadron in the Atlantic. After participating in blockade operations in the western Mediterranean in H. SurpriseJack Aubrey relinquishes command of the frigate to her regular captain and returns home to England. The Lively was a genuine Royal Navy ship. However, Patrick O'Brian did alter the ship's history for purposes of his fiction. In Post Captain the frigate is described as having served for a considerable period in the East Indies when in fact the Lively was launched and commissioned inthe same year when Jack Aubrey takes command. The Lively was lost in a wreck near Valletta while escorting a convoy to Malta in HMS Surprise. SurpriseJack Aubrey is given the small frigate HMS Surprise of 28 guns, aboard which he had served years before as a midshipman. His assignment is to carry a diplomat to the East Indies, where he uses his ship to support the China Fleet of East India Company merchantmen to successfully fight off Admiral Linois's squadron. Afterwards, Jack and the Surprise return across the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic and head northwards towards home. The historical Surprise was originally the French l'Unitecaptured in Although this accords well with Jack's comment that she had been taken from the French "early in the last war" evidently meaning the French Revolutionary War, beginning inJack's other descriptions of her past do not so well match history.