#000583
Men-of-War: Life in Nelson's Navy
Patrick O'Brian
*Men-of-War* is a short, illustrated primer on daily life aboard Royal Navy warships in the age of Nelson, written by Patrick O'Brian, the novelist behind the beloved Aubrey–Maturin sea stories. In brisk, affectionate chapters he explains the world his fiction inhabits: how a ship was rated and rigged, how a crew was fed, paid, disciplined, and berthed, what the officers and "people" actually did, and how prize money and promotion worked. It reads as a companion to the novels and a friendly on-ramp for anyone curious about the practical reality behind the romance of fighting sail. Compact and well-illustrated, it delivers the texture of shipboard life without the weight of a full naval history.
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The author
Patrick O'Brian (1914–2000) was the pen name of Richard Patrick Russ, the English author of the twenty-volume Aubrey–Maturin novels, among the most admired historical fiction in English. His deep research into the sailing navy underpins both the novels and this nonfiction sketch.
The reputation
O'Brian's own life became a controversy late in his fame. Born Russ in Buckinghamshire—not, as he had let people believe, Irish—he abandoned his first wife and their children (including a chronically ill child) during and after World War II, changed his name, and reinvented himself abroad. Journalists exposed the fabricated backstory in the 1990s. None of this touches the accuracy of Men-of-War, but it colors the persona of "Patrick O'Brian" and is now inseparable from his biography.
How it reads
As a book, it is exactly what it sets out to be: clear, warm, and reliable on the nuts and bolts of Georgian naval life, enriched by O'Brian's novelist's feel for detail.
For more context
Pair with N. A. M. Rodger's The Wooden World for the fuller scholarly picture, and with the Aubrey–Maturin novels themselves.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Patrick O'Brian
- Year
- 1974
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Maritime
- Location
- Colorado
Places