Treason's Harbour

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Treason's Harbour
First edition cover (pre Geoff Hunt)
Author	Patrick O'Brian
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	Aubrey-Maturin series
Genre(s)	Historical novel
Publisher	Harper Collins (UK)
Publication date	1983
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback) & Audio Book (Cassette, CD)
Pages	pages (first edition, hardback) & 408 pages (paperback edition)
ISBN	ISBN 0-393-03709-6, (first edition, hardback) & ISBN 0-393-30863-4 (paperback edition UK)
Preceded by	The Ionian Mission
Followed by	The Far Side of the World

Treason's Harbour, (1983) by Patrick O'Brian is a historical novel set during the Napoleonic period and follows the life of two friends, a naval captain and his ship's surgeon.

[edit] Plot summary

Jack and Stephen are at Malta waiting on the repair of the much-battered Surprise. Both men befriend a young pretty Lieutenant's wife, Mrs. Fielding, on her own as her husband is a prisoner-of-war in France. French Intelligence uses his plight to persuade Mrs. Fielding to spy for them. They eventually assign her to find out information from Stephen by making amorous advances towards him. Jack, who is taking Italian lessons from her, rescues her Illyrian mastiff, Ponto, one evening out of a well, but himself falls in. This leads to the rumour that he is sleeping with her. Maturin and Aubrey also meet Andrew Wray again - Second Secretary to the Admiralty, who has been sent to Malta to sort out dockyard corruption. Jack had an unpleasant previous meeting with him at a gambling house in Portsmouth when he indirectly accused Wray of cheating. As Jack formally introduces Captain Pullings to him, Wray tells Pullings he had insisted on Captain Aubrey's recommendation, adding: ' ... at one time Captain Aubrey seemed to do me an injustice, and by promoting his lieutenant I could, as he sea-phrase goes, the better wipe his eye.'

Jack and the Surprises are dispatched on a secret mission by the new Commander-in-Chief, the highly competent Admiral Ives, to take the Dromedary and capture a Turkish galley laden with French silver in the Red Sea. Unfortunately, the mission has been talked about for many months. The Surprise's crew has to traverse the Sinai Peninsula and eventually meet the HEI ship Niobe in Suez. Jack takes command and sails her down the Red Sea with a troop of Turkish troops to intercept the galley. They eventually spot it and give chase but Jack notices that the galley is playing a trick on him, using a drag sail to artificially slow their speed, and orders his gunner to sink it.

Stephen, who at the beginning of the novel bought a diving bell, is persuaded by moral pressure from the crew and officers to Jack to recover the treasure. After he and Mr Martin bring up the first sealed chest, they find it only contains heavy lead bars and a note, Merde a celui qui le lit. They meet a fishing boat and find out that the galley had been rowing up and down the sea for a month, waiting for lure them under the French fortification's cannon. Their mission a failure, they return on the Niobe to Suez and offload the bitterly disappointed Turkish troops. They have to retrace their steps across the desert but this time their camels are stolen by bedouin horsemen and they reach Tina almost dead from thirst. Fortunately, the Dromedaries are there to revive them and they return to Malta.

Here Jack leans from Admiral Ives that the Surprise is to return to England and be scrapped. Stephen, meanwhile, renews his acquaintance with Mrs Fielding and plants some false information for her to give Leuseur and also thrashes Wray at piquet for high stakes. Jack is given a mission with the re-fitted Surprise to take the Adriatic convoy up the Ionian. While there he meets an old friend, Captain Cotton of the Nymphe, who has just rescued an escaped French prisoner-of-war, Lieutenant Charles Fielding. Fielding, having heard the rumour of Jack's liaison with his wife, not only refuses his offer to return him to Malta but also requests a meeting.

On the return journey Captain Dungas, commanding the massive seventy-four gun Edinburgh, tells Jack of a small French privateer that Jack eventually captures. Unfortunately the chase brings the Surprise in late to port behind Babington’s sloop, the Dryad, and the news of Lt. Fielding’s escape has already circulated. Stephen overhears a conversation at Mrs Fielding's house between Leseur and Boulay, placed high up in the Governor's staff, to assassinate her but manages to take her aboard the Surprise. Sir Francis Ives instructs Aubrey to sail for Zambra to threaten the Dey of Mascara into not attacking British ships, accompanied by the Pollux returning Admiral Harte back to England.

After the Pollox is exiting the Bay of Zambra, a French squadron consisting of a double-decked eighty gun man-of-war and two frigates with French colours fire on her. The old sixty gun Pollux eventually blows up but damages the French newly-built first rate. The two frigates chase the Surprise deep into the bay and nearly cut her off until the heavier frigate runs aground on a reef called The Brothers. Her smaller consort deserts the fight and Jack, on the political advice of Maturin, sets sail for Gibraltar.

[edit] Characters in "Treason's Harbour"

• Jack Aubrey - Captain of HMS Surprise.
• Stephen Maturin - ship's surgeon, friend to Jack and an intelligence officer.
• Sophie Aubrey - Jack's wife
• Mrs Maturin (nee Diana Villiers) - Stephen's wife
• Captain Pullings - promoted to a commander in the Royal Navy
• Mrs Laura Fielding - a young pretty Lieutenant's wife, spying for the French
• Andrew Wray - Second Secretary of the Admiralty
• Andre Lesueur - a French intelligence agent posing as a wealthy merchant on Malta
• Giuseppe - Lesueur's assistant
• Admiral Sir Francis Ives KB - Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet
• Admiral Harte - Second-in-Command of the Mediterranean Fleet
• Admiral Hartley - Jack's former Admiral in the West Indies
• Professor Ebeneezer Graham - assigned from his university; an expert on Turkish affairs
• Lieutenant Charles Fielding - a French prisoner-of-war
• Captain Henry Cotton - once a midshipman with Jack and youngsters together on the Resolution
• Mr Hairabedian - a Turkish dragoman, unfortunately eaten by sharks whilst swimming

• Ponto - Mrs Fielding's Illyrian mastiff

[edit] Ships in "Treason's Harbour"

The British:

• HMS Surprise
• HMS Worcester (condemned to a sheer hulk)
• HMS Dromedary
• HMS Edinburgh
• HMS Pollux
• HMS Nymphe
• HMS Dryad
• HMS Tortoise

• HEI Niobe

The French:

• Mars

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

[edit] Literary significance & criticism

[edit] Reviews

"Splendid adventures...polished, historically accurate, and intensely pleasurable." —Kirkus Reviews

"O'Brian's narrative...provides endlessly varying shocks and surprises—comic, grim, farcical and tragic. An essential of the truly gripping book for the narrative addict is the creation of a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit, and O'Brian does this with prodigal specificity and generosity." — A.S. Byatt

"Captain Jack Aubrey, the best thing afloat since Horatio Hornblower and notably less austere ashore, and his friend Maturin, surgeon, scientist and secret agent, ride out some feminine complications and put another spoke in the Corsican's wheel." - Stephen Vaughan's review^[1]

[edit] Publishing details

• 1983 UK, Collins (ISBN ?), Pub date ? ? 1983, hardback (first edition)
• 1984, UK, Fontana (ISBN 978-0006168157), pub date 26 April 1984, paperback
• 1997, UK, HarperCollins (ISBN 978-0006499237), pub date 3 Mar 1997, paperback
• 2003, USA, Chivers, Windsor, Paragon & Co (ISBN 978-0754091486), pub date 1 July 2003, paperback (large print)
• ?, USA, ISIS Audio Books (ISBN 978-0753100837), pub date ? ? ?, Audio cassette (unabridged - narrated by Patrick Tull)

[edit] Sources, references, external links, quotations

[edit] References

• US publishers official page. WW Norton catalogue. Retrieved on 2008-02-12.

[edit] Footnotes