The Thirteen Gun Salute

The Thirteen Gun Salute

First edition
Author Patrick O'Brian
Cover artist Geoff Hunt
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Series Aubrey–Maturin series
Genre Historical novel
Publisher Collins (UK)
Publication date
 1989
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback) & Audio Book (Cassette, CD)
Pages 320 paperback edition
ISBN 0-393-02974-3 first edition, hardback & 0-393-30907-X paperback edition UK
OCLC 23692637
823/.914 20
LC Class PR6029.B56 T45 1991
Preceded by The Letter of Marque
Followed by The Nutmeg of Consolation

The Thirteen Gun Salute is the thirteenth historical novel in the Aubrey–Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1989. The story is set during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. The first edition bears this title, whereas later issues have used The Thirteen-Gun Salute featuring a hyphenated title.

Spain hears that England may be supporting the independence of its colonies in South America, while an envoy is needed in the Malay states to gain an ally for England. These two changes alter Aubrey's mission from his private man-of-war, Surprise en route to South America, to reinstatement on the Navy List and command of HMS Diane, carrying the envoy.

Plot summary

After spending time on land, Jack Aubrey, Stephen Maturin, and their shipmates are preparing for a mission to sail the letter of marque Surprise on a mission to South America. Upon reaching Lisbon, Sir Joseph Blaine intercepts Maturin with news that he and Aubrey are required to carry a diplomat to the Sultan of Pulo Prabang, a piratical Malay state in the South China Sea. They are to transport Fox, the envoy leading the mission to persuade the Sultan to become an English rather than French ally. The French envoys include the same English traitors - Ledward and Wray - who were responsible for Aubrey's former disgrace. With the Surprise under the command of Captain Pullings, Aubrey and Maturin return with Blaine to England, where Lord Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty, reinstates Aubrey as a Post-Captain in the Royal Navy and gives him command of the recently captured French ship Diane. The voyage south forms the crew, with frequent training on the guns; by the luck of a timely breeze and much hard rowing in the ship's boats, Diane escapes the inshore currents of Inaccessible Island. Sailing through the high forties (south latitude), she first touches land at Java, meeting Lieutenant Governor Raffles near Batavia, where they hear the first word of bank failures in England.

Arriving in Pulo Prabang, Maturin meets fellow natural philosopher van Buren and helps the arrogant envoy Fox plot against the French mission. During the leisurely negotiations with the Sultan, Maturin climbs the "Thousand Steps" to Kumai, a protected valley in the crater of a volcano and home to the orangutans he has been longing to see. Returning to town, he learns that Abdul, the Sultan's cupbearer and catamite has been caught in a compromising position with both Ledward and Wray. Abdul is executed and Ledward and Wray are banished from the court for their indiscretions, effectively ending the French mission. Wray and Ledward are eventually assassinated and Maturin and van Buren dissect their bodies.

After a feast to celebrate the treaty, at which Fox and his retinue behave without discretion, the Diane makes for Batavia and to rendezvous with the Surprise. Fox behaves with increasing arrogance during the return voyage, the success of the treaty having gone to his head. After missing their rendezvous, the Diane sails toward Batavia, so Fox can sail to England on another ship. The frigate strikes a hidden reef and the ship cannot be floated again. They set up camp on a small island, but Fox insists on sailing in Diane's pinnace, rather than waiting until the ship is again afloat. He leaves Edwards aboard with an official duplicate of the treaty. A typhoon destroys the marooned Diane and Aubrey believes that the pinnace, if caught in the same storm, likely did not survive. With the situation growing desperate, Aubrey directs the men to build a vessel to get them to Batavia.

Title

The title refers to the honour, a thirteen-gun salute from the ship's guns, that is due to Fox as an official envoy and representative of the King.

Cover art

The cover art depicts the Surprise and one of her boats working to escape the tides and lee shore of Inaccessible Island.[1]

Characters

See also Recurring characters in the Aubrey–Maturin series

In England

Aboard Surprise

Aboard HMS Diane

In Pulo Prabang or Java

Ships

Series chronology

This novel references actual events with accurate historical detail, like all in this series. In respect to the internal chronology of the series, it is the seventh of eleven novels (beginning with The Surgeon's Mate) that might take five or six years to happen but are all pegged to an extended 1812, or as Patrick O'Brian says it, 1812a and 1812b (introduction to The Far Side of the World, the tenth novel in this series). The events of The Yellow Admiral again match up with the historical years of the Napoleonic wars in sequence, as the first six novels did.

Continuity

This story starts a few months after The Letter of Marque ends, with the Surprise ready for the South American voyage imagined at the time of her letter of marque. The crew aboard Surprise is unchanged, save for those men who use their prize money from the first cruise of the Surprise to set up inns or pubs, collectively called Aubrey's Arms. All but one of the high level spies appear in this novel, specifically Ledward and Wray, who had fled to France in The Letter of Marque and are now arrived in Pulo Prabang as part of Duplessis's mission, as Ledward can translate for Duplessis. After seeing Gough in the French privateer, Maturin reflects on his life since the rising in 1798, rereading old diaries that tell when he began his work with intelligence to the purposes of defeating Napoleon, supporting Irish independence and freeing Catalonia, after meeting Aubrey.

Reviews

Kirkus Reviews said the ultimate appeal lies in the delicious old-fashioned prose:

Norton's admirable attempt to achieve for O'Brian in this country at least some semblance of the success he has enjoyed in England continues apace with the release of this 13th adventure of Captain Jack Aubrey and his crew of British seamen during the Napoleonic Wars, in conjunction with trade paperback reprintings of two earlier books in the series (H.M.S. Surprise, The Mauritius Command). At this stage in his career, Aubrey commands the Surprise, a private man-of-war licensed to do battle with enemy warships on behalf of the Crown. He remains a man whose great capabilities and raw energy while at sea are often nullified by an inability to cope while on land, and so it is that captain and crew set sail most precipitously for South America after a lengthy stay ashore, at least in part so that Jack will make no social or political errors that might set back his efforts to be restored to the Royal Navy. Aboard as always is Dr. Stephen Maturin-- Aubrey's closest friend, ship's surgeon, and British spy--the character who provides an intellectual counterpoint to Jack's more physical presence. While the Surprise goes on its appointed rounds, however, Aubrey and Maturin undertake another assignment- -delivering a British envoy to the Malaysian Islands to negotiate a treaty there in competition with the French (a mission that, happily, requires that Jack's precious Navy rank be returned him). The story's the thing, of course, but the ultimate appeal of the Aubrey/Maturin adventures lies in O'Brian's delicious old-fashioned prose, the wonderfully complex sentences that capture the feel of the sea and the culture of the great warships, all the while sketching with apparent accuracy and truth the early 19th-century world.[2]

Publishers Weekly found this novel will likely make new fans of the series:

The 18th [sic] in O'Brian's Jack Aubrey series will please current fans and likely make new ones. Newly rich Aubrey (The Letter of Marque), again a Royal Navy captain and even a rotten-borough M.P., is given command of the frigate Diane with orders to bring king's envoy Fox to conclude a treaty with the sultan of Borneo before Napoleon does. Aboard is Jack's friend Dr. Maturin, English secret agent and avid naturalist. After a placid trip (via Antarctica) and some stormy local politics (involving two English traitors and the sultan's catamite) the treaty is made. Fox's growing arrogance breeds ill will and when homeward-bound Diane hits a reef Jack gladly sends the envoy ahead in a cutter. O'Brian's style has been compared with Jane Austen's: even the dinners (in country house, London, ship's mess, sultan's palace, Buddhist monastery) are distinguished wittily. Perhaps the most charming segment is Maturin's idyllic stay in a remote valley, where he blissfully encounters and studies a variety of tame exotic beasts.[3]

Thomas Flanagan, writing in the New York Times Books was pleased to have discovered the series of novels, and The Thirteen Gun Salute in particular:

In January of this year, the series of romances was the subject of a glowing and well-deserved essay in this journal by Richard Snow, the editor of American Heritage magazine, who roundly and with polemical extravagance declared them to be "the best historical novels ever written." Not quite, perhaps. But I for one would not otherwise have heard of them, and they are novels of extraordinary, quirky attractiveness, oblique and complicated charm, a rich and reliable intelligence. W. W. Norton should be thanked for taking up the abandoned task of publishing them in this country (they plan to issue all 14 volumes O'Brian has thus far written). The problem is not exclusively American. The British critic Peter Wishart has described the neglect of Patrick O'Brian as a literary wonder of the age, "as baffling as the Inca inability to invent the wheel." Why all the fuss? . . .

The novels display a dazzling receptiveness to language, an understanding of period speech so entire that it never needs to preen itself -- although here and there it does. There is a recklessness with plot that is intentionally subversive of the genre. Climactic scenes are deliberately thrown away, revealed in casual conversation. The narrative pauses to digress on orangutans in Borneo, the cuisine of Portugal, a Mozart quartet. The twists of plot are swift, drastic, on occasion comic, on occasion grotesque: in this novel, Maturin's way of dealing with two English traitors at the Malay court of Pulo Prabang draws casually and lethally on his knowledge of zoology and his skill as an anatomist. . . .

It is a pleasure to read a contemporary historical novel written not by machine but by hand.[4]

Allusions to science and history

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:

Captain Aubrey's orders to HMS Diane are mentioned as occurring in the "fifty-third year" of the reign of King George III, thus fixing the year about 1813 which, due to the mental illness of the king, was the third year of the Regency.

Allusions to other literature

Lois Montbertrand published an article concerning O'Brian's use of A. E. Housman's poem "Bells in the Tower" in this novel.[6] She explains how O'Brian uses the fragment of the poem in the plot, as one character wants to get closer to Stephen Maturin, while Stephen Maturin would rather not.

Publication history

References

  1. ↑ "Thirteen-gun Salute; The POB Cover". Retrieved 16 February 2015.
  2. ↑ "The Thirteen Gun Salute" (15 April 1991 ed.). Kirkus Reviews. 20 May 2010. Retrieved 8 December 2014.
  3. ↑ "The Thirteen Gun Salute". Publishers Weekly. May 1991. Retrieved 8 December 2014.
  4. ↑ Thomas Flanagan (4 August 1991). "Elegantly, They Sail Against Bonaparte". New York Times Books. Retrieved 15 December 2014.
  5. ↑ Patrick O'Brian. The Thirteen-Gun Salute. Norton. p. 417.
  6. ↑ Lois Montbertrand (2005). "Bells in the Tower: Patrick O'Brian's unattributed use of Poem AP IX, in his novel The Thirteen-Gun Salute". Housman Society Journal 2002, Volume Twenty Eight, p. 106. The Gunroom of HMS Surprise. Retrieved 3 July 2014.

External sources