Blue at the Mizzen

Plot summary

The Surprise sails out of Gibraltar but collides in the dark with a Nordic timber ship and returns for repairs. Back ashore, Aubrey hears a reliable description of the last day of the battle at Waterloo; he thanks Lord Keith for moving the prize court along briskly to share out the huge prize, more than 382 pounds a share. Aubrey has clandestine visits with his cousin Isobel, Lord Barmouth's wife. Admiral Lord Barmouth hastens the repair work, realizing he helps himself that way. Many Surprises desert. The frigate sails to Madeira for more serious repairs but arrives just in time to see Coelho's famous shipyard at Funchal in flames. Maturin receives a coded report from Dr Amos Jacob regarding the Chilean situation and takes the Ringle to England, where Sir Joseph Blaine updates him. The Chileans have split into two factions: northern still interested in British help, and southern retaining the services of Sir David Lindsay to command the Chilean navy. Whilst Maturin stays with Sophie Aubrey at Woolcombe, Aubrey returns the Surprise to Seppings' yard in England for a thorough re-fit and recruits a strong, competent crew out of Shelmerston for the long voyage ahead. In London, the Duke of Clarence asks Aubrey to accept Horatio Hanson as a midshipman. Initially reluctant, Aubrey finds that the boy has the mathematical skills essential for a navigator and he becomes a competent sailor. Fully fitted, the Surprise stops at Funchal, picking up Jacob, and then heads for Freetown, where Maturin proposes marriage to a young attractive widow. Christine Wood shares his tastes for natural philosophy. Her view of marriage suffered from her first marriage, as her husband was impotent. She turns him down. She agrees on her upcoming trip to England to visit the Aubreys at their home in Dorset and to meet Maturin's daughter Brigid there. Surprise then sails to the coast of Brazil, where Dr Amos Jacob parts to cross the mountains overland.

After a difficult rounding of Cape Horn, the expedition reaches San Patricio in Chile. Ringle goes for repairs following a grounding in the Pillón passage. After a meeting between Aubrey, Maturin and Sir David Lindsay, in which the two sides agree to mutually support each other, Maturin writes to Blaine describing the different juntas and the training of three republican sloops by the crew of the Surprise, who assist in capturing a moderate privateer. After meeting Dr Jacob with the intelligence he gathered, Aubrey heads to Valparaiso, while Maturin and Jacob ride there by mule. Here they meet General Bernardo O'Higgins, the Supreme Director, and Colonel Eduardo Valdes. Learning that the viceroy of Peru, under the Spanish king, plans to invade Chile, the group determine to confront the Royalist forces at Valdivia, where the viceroy will need to seek stores. The Surprise and Ringle make sail and Aubrey elaborates a plan to drop Chilean troops at Concepción while the ships destroy the gun-emplacements at Cala Alta and then bombard the fort at Valdivia.

The plan succeeds and the revolutionaries capture four chests of silver and one of gold, conveyed by the Surprise to Valparaiso and then overland to Santiago. Sir David Lindsay fights a duel with one of his officers and dies. Popular local sentiment gradually turns against the British, and Aubrey receives news that the junta plans to impound his frigate. He decides to pre-empt action against Surprise by cutting out the Peruvian fifty-gun frigate Esmeralda at Callao in Peru to strengthen the Chilean navy. Surprise conducts a hard-fought broadside action and eventually the British-Chilean force takes the ship. Aubrey suffers wounds in the thigh and shoulder. Maturin and Jacob compose a coded message of the successful cutting-out to Sir Joseph Blaine which the schooner takes to the Isaac Newton, as Dobson's friends agree to carry the message across Panama to meet a returning merchantman. Ringle carries the news to Valparaiso.

The President of the Valparaiso junta, Don Miguel Carrera, gives Aubrey and his officers a lavish dinner, after which Aubrey insists on his sailors receiving their share of the prize-money and Esmeralda's value by the end of the month. The next day Don Miguel authorizes five thousand pieces of eight and use of any naval stores the Surprise requires. With a fully repaired ship, Aubrey sets about training the young Chilean naval officers as the Surprise continues her survey of the Chilean coast, for several weeks. Jacob arrives from Valparaiso on a private brig, with coded messages from Sir Joseph Blaine. The Duke of Clarence requests Horatio Hanson's return to sit his lieutenant's examination. Second, the Admiralty requires Aubrey to take command of the South African squadron, hoisting his broad pennant as Rear Admiral of the Blue at the River Plate, blue at the mizzen, aboard HMS Implacable. Carrera arrives with a message saying it will take three more months to complete the payments, releasing Aubrey from his responsibility to the Chileans. He accepts his promotion, sets course for the Strait of Magellan.

Characters

See also Recurring characters in the Aubrey–Maturin series

In Gibraltar or aboard Surprise

Met in Madeira

Met in England

Met in the doldrums

Met in Chile

Ships

British

American

Chilean

Spanish

Title

A blue ensign at the mizzen-mast indicated the presence of a Rear Admiral of the Blue, the lowest flag-rank in the Royal Navy of the early 19th century.

Allusions to real places

Shelmerston, the home port of HMHV Surprise since she was bought out of the service by Maturin is fictional, but based on a real place on the western coast of England, Appledore near the River Torridge in Devon. Funchal is the long time capital of the island of Madeira, part of Portugal. Gibraltar is real, a British base in the Mediterranean Sea. Freetown was the government center for British West Africa, and is now the capital of Sierra Leone. The southern tip of South America, Cape Horn, is at best a hard voyage for a sailing ship. Valdivia, Concepción, Valparaíso, and Santiago and are real places in Chile. Callao is a port city in Peru, and was part of the Viceroyalty of Peru before it became independent from Spain. The Strait of Magellan is the passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean north of Tierra del Fuego discovered by Magellan. For sailing vessels going east to west, the Strait is more challenging, due to its narrowness, than rounding Cape Horn, which is further south. Going west to east, the Strait was faster if the season was right.

Reviews

Kirkus Reviews likes the new character Horatio Hanson, marks the growing number following this series, and hopes, in vain, for another novel to follow this, as this novel is escape at its most intelligent and demanding.

O’Brian announced long ago that he hoped to write 20 volumes in his series centering on the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and featuring Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. Along the way, he has built up a huge British following, if a lesser one in the States, although American reviewers find the series splendidly literate. And so here is volume 20, which finds Napoleon defeated at Waterloo and Jack and now-widower Stephen at Gibralter, sent on a mission to release Spain’s naval stranglehold on Chile and help Chile gain her independence. Nearly half the duo’s crew, however, a ragtag bunch of the stupid and least-skilled, has deserted. And an accident in the roaring darkness as the Surprise sets forth requires that it be put up for repairs. During this period Stephen falls in love with Christine Wood, a naturalist, and asks for her hand in marriage. The journey around Cape Horn to Chile takes the Surprise through the most southerly and icy of horrors. Meanwhile, Jack has the nurturing of Midshipman Horatio Hanson, the engaging bastard son of a future king of England, to think about. The climax comes when the vastly outmanned and outnumbered Surprise attacks the Spanish fleet. Escape at its most intelligent and demanding. Is this the farewell Aubrey/Maturin novel? Not very likely, with the gingery addition of Horatio Hanson to the mix.

Publishers Weekly thinks readers may find this novel the best of the series, with Maturin's love letters and the actions along the Chilean coast.

With bittersweet pleasure, readers may deem this 20th--and possibly final--installment in O'Brian's highly regarded series featuring Capt. Jack Aubrey of the English Royal Navy and Stephen Maturin, ship's doctor, the best of the lot. Post-Waterloo, the frigate Surprise sets sail to South America as a ""hydrographical vessel,"" ostensibly to survey the Straits of Magellan and Chile's southern coast. In fact, Jack and Stephen are to offer help to the Chilean rebels trying to break free from Spain. On their way down the coast of West Africa, romance blossoms for both men. Jack's liaison (with his cousin, Isobel, in Gibraltar) is brief, but widower Stephen's passion for Christine Wood, a naturalist who has been his correspondent for some time, turns serious in Sierra Leone. The doctor's correspondence with Christine begins with accounts of his explorations in Africa and South America, referencing, say, an ""anomalous nuthatch"" or the ""etymology of doldrum,"" but they're quite wonderful love letters, functioning as a chorus to the action. Once in Chile, despite the conflict between opposing rebel camps, Jack leads a successful raid on a treasure fort in Valdivia, followed by the seizure of a Peruvian frigate to be turned over to the Chilean rebels, triumphs that reap him a just reward; at that point, readers will learn the title's significance. Throughout, familiar characters abound and entertain, especially the amusingly nasty steward, Killick, and Stephen's ""loblolly girl"" (nurse), Poll Skeeping. And finally, there is Horatio Hanson, bastard son of a nobleman, who comes on board as a midshipman, a dashing young foil for the ship's elders. O'Brian has rightfully been compared to Jane Austen, but one wonders if even she would have done justice to ""those extraordinary hollow dwellings, sometimes as beautiful as they were comfortless."" To use one of Stephen's favorite expressions, ""What joy!""

Writing in the New York Times, Amanda Foreman remarks that Blue at the Mizzen is "a shining jewel" and "an intricate, multifaceted work -- one of those rare novels that actually bear up under close scrutiny." Of O'Brian's popularity with the series, she says "Here was a writer who deliberately challenged you to keep pace." As to the question of the ending of the series, "Blue at the Mizzen could indeed be the finale. In a sense the heroes have clearly reached their destinations, and there is a psychological completeness to the novel even though the plot is inconclusive. Halfway through their adventures, while visiting Sierra Leone, Maturin experiences an emotional rebirth." For Aubrey, his long sought goal is given by the book's title, indicating he gets promoted to Rear Admiral of the Blue. Foreman feels that the author's view is "the end [is] less important than the journey itself." She closes with words of strong praise: "There is nothing in this century that rivals Patrick O'Brian's achievement in his chosen genre. His novels embrace with loving clarity the full richness of the 18th-century world. They embody the cruelty of battle, the comedy of men's lives, the uncertain fears that plague their hearts; and yet, not far away, is the vision of an ideal existence."

Harry Wessel in the Orlando Sentinel appreciates Aubrey's frustrations in peace time, now that Napoleon is defeated. Yet there is more for Aubrey and Maturin to do. "It turns out there is a lot they can do. The political intrigue in revolutionary Chile is right up Stephen's alley, while Jack's fighting skills also are called into play, culminating in a satisfying naval action that, as always, brims with historically accurate detail."

Writing in The Guardian, Jan Morris says the "chronicle has aged too. It has lost something of its sprightly edge, its allusions are mistier and its pace is slower. This is in no way a criticism. As the Frenchman said: 'Le style est l'homme même', and just as Aubrey is no longer the exuberant young commander of the early novels, so O'Brian's narrative has matured with him. So have we."

Publication history

English language editions listed for UK and USA markets

Publishers Weekly noted that over three million copies of the books in the Aubrey-Maturin series have been sold, by November 1999.