The Thirteen Gun Salute

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The Thirteen Gun Salute, (1989) is a further historical novel in the series by Patrick O'Brian. This first edition bears this title, whereas later issues have used The Thirteen-Gun Salute featuring a hyphenated title.

[edit] Plot summary

Immediately following The Letter of Marque, the narrative picks up with Aubrey getting the Surprise underway for a mission to South America. Upon reaching Lisbon, however, Dr Maturin is intercepted by Sir Joseph Blaine and told that he and Aubrey will be required to first go on a mission to the Sultan of Pulo Prabang, a piratical Malay state in the South China Sea, to persuade him to become an English rather than French ally. The French are being openly assisted by the same English traitors - Wray and Ledward - who were responsible for Aubrey's former disgrace. With the Surprise now commanded by Captain Pullings, they return with Blaine to England where Jack Aubrey is reinstated with his former seniority as a Post-Captain in the Royal Navy by Lord Melville. He is also given command of the recently captured French ship Diane for the mission ahead.

Stephen's work keeps him undercover as a naturalist as he engages in a political duel for influence at the Sultan's court. Although his activities are to go unknown, they prove to be invaluable in both undermining the French efforts and finally exacting his revenge on his enemies, the French agents, Ledward and Wray. Ledward and Wray are caught in bed with Abdul, a boy who is the Sultan's cupbearer and catamite, the Sultan having pederast tendencies, though married and fathering a son by his queen. Abdul is gruesomely executed, while Wray and Ledward are banished from the court, effectively ending the French mission. Ledward and Wray are later shot (O'Brian leaves it until well into the following novel to confirm Maturin as the assassin) and Maturin dissects their bodies with a fellow natural philosopher and intelligence agent, the Dutchman van Buren.

After a long drunken feast, at which Fox and his retinue behave grossly, the Diane makes for Batavia and to rendezvous with the Surprise off the False Natunas. Fox behaves with increasing arrogance during the return voyage, the success of the treaty having gone to his head. Jack has words with him, Stephen turns against him for his incivility, and the rest of Dianes loathe him. One night the frigate strikes a hidden reef and her Captain and crew are shipwrecked on a desert island. Fox and his colleagues decide to sail for Batavia in Diane's pinnace, but are caught in a typhoon and presumed killed. During the same typhoon, the marooned Diane is destroyed but Aubrey's crew are able to build a fair-sized schooner from what reamins of the frigate - her starboard bow and hull.

The title refers to the honour that is due to Fox as an official envoy and representative of the King (it is also the thirteenth title in the Aubrey-Maturin series).

[edit] Characters in "The Thirteen Gun Salute"

• Jack Aubrey - Captain of the Surprise and appointed Captain of HMS Diane.
• Stephen Maturin - ship's surgeon, friend to Jack and an intelligence officer.
• Sophie Williams - Jack's wife
• Captain Tom Pullings - a volunteer and First Lieutenant on the Surprise
• Awkward Davies - Able Seaman
• Barret Bonden - Jack's coxwain
• Preserved Killick - Jack's steward cum butler
• Mr Nathaniel Martin - unbeneficed clergyman; surgeon's mate to Stephen
• Mr Standish - short-term purser of the Surprise and Martin's friend from Cambridge University
• Lord Melville - First Lord of the Admiralty
• Sir Joseph Blaine - Head of Intelligence at the Admiralty
• Edward Fox - Foreign Office envoy
• Mr Edwards - Fox's secretary
• Mr Fielding - Diane's Lieutenant
• Mr Elliott - Diane's Second Lieutenant
• Dick Richardson - Diane's Third Lieutenant (formerly known as Spotted Dick in his youth)
• Ledward (ex Treasury) and Wray (ex Admiralty)- two English traitors; part of the French delegation
• Loder - a member of Fox's retinue
• Johnstone - a Judge and a member of Fox's retinue
• Welby - Lieutenant of the Marines
• Hadley - Diane's carpenter
• Duplessis - the French envoy
• Dumesnil - Lieutenant of the Cornelie; nephew of Christy-Palliere

[edit] Ships in "The Thirteen Gun Salute"

The British:

• The Surprise - a private man-of-war or letter of marque
• HMS Diane (a 32-gun frigate daringly captured by the Surprise in The Letter of Marque and sold into British service)
• HMS Briseis
• HMS Nimble - a two-hundred ton cutter

The French:

• The Cornelie
• A snow (bearing Robert Gough, a United Irishman and former acquaintance of Stephen's)

[edit] Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science

On the voyage to Java, Jack has with him a chart showing Alexander von Humboldt's maximum and minimum sea-temperatures over a vast stretch of ocean. He sets out to carry on Humboldt's programme of measuring temperatures at various depths, salinity, atmospheric pressure etc - as he says to Stephen, to have 'A chain right round to the Pacific'.

For instruments, he takes on board the Surprise:

• an improved dipping-needle
• a very delicate hygrometer of Jack's own invention
• an improved azimuth-compass
• a Geneva cyanograph
• thermometers graduated by Ramsden

(ref: p.4171 The Thirteen-Gun Salute Norton edition)

[edit] Literary significance & criticism

[edit] Editions

• Audio Edition Recorded Books, LLC; Unabridged Audio edition narrated by Patrick Tull (ISBN 0788767178)

[edit] Sources, references, external links, quotations

Lois Montbertrand published an article concerning O'Brian's use of A. E. Housman's poem "Bells in the Tower" in this novel, in the Housman Society Journal 2002. See text at [1]

[edit] Footnotes