Patrick O’Brian clearly enjoyed writing The Golden Ocean. Three years later, in The Unknown Shore, he used the same source material. The true story of a 1740 Royal Navy squadron sent to the Pacific to take a Spanish galleon becomes the platform from which O’Brian creates a separate story. One of the vessels, the Wager, carries midshipman Jack Byron and his friend the surgeon’s mate, Tobias Barrow.
“In Jack and Toby,” crows the book jacket, “O’Brian fans will thrill to catch fascinating glimpses of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, famed heroes of the great Aubrey/Maturin series to come.” That’s fair. The mix of Jack Byron’s high spirits and sea knowledge certainly feels like foreshadowing of Jack Aubrey. And Toby’s landlubber characteristics, combined with his love of natural history, more than hints at Maturin, though without the tortured internal life and intelligence agent role.
The Wager shipwrecks off the coast of Chile about halfway through the novel. The continuation is a less interesting tale of the lengthy journey back to civilization, first in Santiago and then eventually back to London.
The brief time in Santiago is vividly drawn, and I am amazed once more at the fact that O’Brian never travelled, and wasn’t much of a sailor, either. Goes to show you that an imagination is sometimes better off unencumbered by visual impressions. If all you know is what you’ve read and researched, then it’s up to you to turn around and find the words to share your internal vision. O’Brian got better and better at doing that. I finally ordered #18, The Yellow Admiral, from Amazon.com, so I’ll finish the final three in the Aubrey-Maturin series before the end of the year. Then what?