The Surgeon's Mate

The Surgeon’s Mate takes Aubrey and Maturin out of the far south and into the north, which is no less dangerous. On shore in Halifax and celebrating the triumph of the HMS Shannon over the USS Chesapeake, the first hazard is to Aubrey’s honor, as he falls in with a fast local woman, one Amanda Smith, who just looooves her naval heroes.

A dispatch boat takes them out of romantic danger and into physical danger, as they are chased through the North Atlantic by American privateers hired by a vengeful Johnson, coming off only when the enemy strikes an iceberg and sinks. There’s barely enough time to patch up Aubrey’s affairs in Britain and for Maturin to duck over to Paris to give a lecture on birds, when the two are ordered off on a diplomatic mission to secure a vital fortress island in the Baltic sea. The fortress is held by a Catalan regiment, fortunately commanded by Maturin’s godfather, but the last ship to approach was destroyed before it could send an envoy in under flag of truce. Aubrey contrives to capture a swift Danish privateer with his new sloop, the HMS Ariel, when it runs aground on the banks.

All goes well on the mission, but while conveying the Catalans back to Catalonia, the ship’s chronometer is destroyed, and after a sharp action to delay a French ship of the line, a lost Ariel wanders into a fatal bay in Brittany and is wrecked. The two of them are captured and taken to Paris, where they make a fortunate escape from prison just as Johnson arrives to doom Maturin as a spy.

This book is by definition a comedy, since it ends with a wedding, and many plot points hinge on romance, and especially the desirability of a young Lithuanian officer who accompanies our protagonists. There is some pleasing symmetry in the plot, and O’Brien’s skill at the earthiness of the early 19th century, food and carriage rides and upset stomachs, is tuned to a particularly sharp point. Yet conversely, our protagonists succeed or are damned by circumstances far outside their control, tossed on the winds of fate even more thoroughly than when sailing on the unlucky HMS Java.