The Surgeon's Mate
A mail packet running for England is chased across the Atlantic for the papers in Stephen Maturin's hands, and for the woman travelling with him.
About
The Surgeon's Mate is the seventh novel of the Aubrey-Maturin series by the English writer Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1980. It is set during the War of 1812 and the Napoleonic Wars, and it begins where the American campaign of the previous book has left the two friends.
Fresh from a victory over an American ship, Aubrey, Maturin and Diana Villiers take passage home in a packet that is hunted the whole way across the ocean, partly for the despatches Maturin is carrying and partly for Diana herself. By outrunning the pursuers the packet carries its news to England ahead of the official report.
Aubrey's next command is the Ariel, a small ship sent to the Danish coast on an errand that is quieter and more political than his usual work. The waters of the Baltic in that season and the people waiting on the far shore give the mission a shape the two of them have not met before, and the book keeps its attention on the working out of a plan in which seamanship is only part of what is needed.
Book details
- Author
- Patrick O'Brian
- First published
- 1980
- Series
- Aubrey-Maturin, book 7
- Subgenre
- Sea adventure, Naval adventure
- Primary genre
- Adventure, Historical Fiction
- Tags
- No tags for this book.
- Reading order
- Also on this shelf: Master and Commander (book 1), The Mauritius Command (book 4), The Fortune of War (book 6), The Ionian Mission (book 8), Treason's Harbour (book 9), The Far Side of the World (book 10), The Reverse of the Medal (book 11), The Letter of Marque (book 12), The Thirteen-Gun Salute (book 13), The Wine-Dark Sea (book 16), The Commodore (book 17)
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