As luck (or fate) would have it, I would embark again under the command of Captain O’Brian, twice as often. Patrick O’Brian (1914-2000) was the author of what is inarguably the best naval adventure series of all time, the 20 novels (plus one unfinished) starring British Royal Navy captain Jack Aubrey and his naturalist friend and spy Stephen Maturin Place during the Period of the Napoleonic Wars. These novels, which Edhasa published in Spanish for 30 years as they appeared in English, are part of the seafaring (literary) tradition of many readers and are anchored in a privileged place in our hearts and libraries (where they occupy a good part of the shelf). ; Luckily you don’t have to pay any mooring fees there).
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I didn’t think about O’Brian – who I was lucky enough to meet and interview several times (although he once got angry with me and considered hanging me at court in a nautical sense) – at all. Especially since the shipwreck of my brother-in-law’s ship, the famous Black Pearl, of whose tough crew I was occasionally a member, I have not been at sea anymore. However, Melville, and there is no comparison, also left his life as a sailor behind, which didn’t stop him from writing Moby Dick. In fact, when O’Brian himself died, we learned that he had largely invented his biography and that his name was not originally O’Brian, nor was he Irish, nor had he sailed as he claimed, and yet we must see how he it described the order of holding the topsails, lowering the topmast and preparing the topmast (I don’t remember if that is the correct order and don’t ask me what a topmast is, a small topmast I think) .
A sailor in the rigging of the “Rose”.
The fact is that I was recently in the Daunt Books bookstore in London with some journalist colleagues when one of them, Jesús García Calero, said to me with a broad, self-satisfied smile: “Look what I found,” while telling me a book issued small volume. . It was The Uncertain Land and Other Poems (Harper Collins, 2023), the paperback edition of O’Brian’s poems, published in 2019. Hell, I didn’t have it. It was the only specimen (“Oh, what a shame”), and Calero rubbed it in my eyes so much that I regretted not drowning it in the Nile when I had the chance. His complacency – and the fact that they had already put it in an envelope – prevented him from realizing that I had in turn picked up another, even better book in O’Brian’s universe: the exciting All Hand on Deck, a Modern Day High Seas. Adventure to the Other Side of the World, by Will Sofrin (Abram Press, 2023), the story of the adventurous voyage of the frigate Rose, which would embody the Surprise, the most famous ship of the Aubrey Maturin series, in the film Master and Commander: The World’s Farthest Coast by Peter Weir from 2003.
Patrick O’Brian’s Poems (I finally got the book on Amazon) was published posthumously in 2019 after the poems, a hundred of them, unexpectedly turned up in a manila envelope in a drawer in his old house. Neither the author’s family nor the trustees had any knowledge of this material. O’Brian’s stepson, Count Nikolai Tolstoy (son of his second wife Mary and an exiled Russian aristocrat), inherited some twenty poems and knew that there must be more from the author’s and his own mother’s diaries. However, the fact is that O’Brian was a secret poet and none of his readers knew this aspect of his creation, apart from the poetry of the sea that he captured in his novels. Despite this, and that every fan of the writer should read them to complete their vision of him, personally Patrick O’Brian’s poems left me quite cold.
O’Brian was a very special and difficult man, with an angry streak and ready to be insulted, as happens to proud people who, as happened to him, only triumphed towards the end of their lives after many hardships and humiliations. His verse lacks lyricism (I dare say it because he is dead) and is labored, harsh and dry (a rarity in an author of sea novels); some exude bitterness and a withered Saturnine sadness. The vast majority (despite the book’s beautiful cover featuring a raging sea on the coast) are from the interior and mountains, and there are very few marine images (“The sea and the sky are silent” consists of only two repeated stanzas and “Walk by”) The sea to see wonders is a walk along the shore, with a beautiful verse, yes, “the long blue flash, the halcyon flights” and a note of the “pearl sea”, the pearl sea and the ” wine darkening”. Sea”, plus some mentions of a captain and rum). The telluric, rural and agricultural references (pomegranate trees, cypresses, olive trees, orange trees, gardens) as well as the strict tone refer us to the Latin classics, to a Horace. They are not the epic and romantic verses that a Jack Aubrey would write (although the lucky captain would like to see the stars several times, protectors of sailors, like the Pleiades), but certainly those of a Maturin. In this sense, there are numerous references to birds (flamingos, terns, swans, herons, cormorants, ospreys, plovers, buzzards, partridges, the already mentioned halcyon or kingfisher, the Pyrenean crow) and other animals, as well as mentions of the appearance of Collioure, Catalonia ( the Sardana!) and the Spanish Republicans.
Patrick O’Brian.
There is a poem about the Blitz (the author met Mary when they were both working on ambulances rescuing victims of Nazi bombings), some remember their lives in extreme material poverty in a cottage in Cwm Croesor, Wales, and their arrival in Roussillon in 1949; and others about lost youth and old age – youth gone, old men, when your lance fails (!). I was looking for a clue to the darkest episode in O’Brian’s life that seemed to torment him: the abandonment of his first family and his sick little daughter who died. Maybe that’s what The Sorrow & the Woe are talking about (“the memory of yesterday and its unnecessary and barren misfortune”) or when a dry heart bleeds (“When a dry heart bleeds/then a meaningless alcohol is poured/more like that.” Bile”).
Much more worthwhile and certainly more nautical is the second book I told you about. Will Sofrin’s account of how a motley crew of thirty sailors (including the author and eight women) under experienced Captain Richard Bailey took the frigate HMS Rose from Newport, Rhode Island in the Atlantic to San Diego, California in the Pacific, crossing the Panama Canal, for filming Master and Commander. The Rose is an exact replica of the 1757 British 20-gun frigate of the same name, built in 1970, including the Nelson Checker painting on the ports. Peter Weir fell in love with it when he saw and visited it and considered it essential to making his film on Patrick O’Brian’s novels. In the film, the Rose became HMS Surprise, the most famous and iconic ship in the series. So 20th Century Fox bought the boat and shipped it to the set. It certainly wasn’t a pleasure cruise. Sofrin explains the difficulty of maneuvering with 30 people instead of the between 180 and 250 of a British frigate of his time, a 54.6 meter long wooden ship, three masts (the largest at a height above sea level of 39.6 meters). like a 13-story building) and huge sturdy sails like the Rose (although she also has engines); and also, he says, in the purest O’Brian tradition, the complex problems of living together on board. The new Rose, which O’Brian was able to see on a trip to the USA in 1995, was built in the same shipyards as the replica of the Bounty (1960), which was used in so many films and on which I briefly went on board that I was able to visit. – I felt like Fletcher Christian (always Brandos and not Gables or Gibsons) – on his visit to Barcelona. It must be remembered that the modern Bounty sank during a voyage in 2012 when it encountered Hurricane Sandy.
The “Rose” as a “surprise” during the filming of “Master and Commander”.
Sofrin, then 21 years old and who came to the Rose as a deckhand and carpenter, writes a wonderful chronicle of the trip, compares the experiences with those of the sailors in Nelson’s time and repeatedly makes references to the world of Aubrey’s novels Maturin (and to the filming of Weir’s film with Russell Crowe as Jack). Instead of sleeping in hammocks, Sofrin and his companions (all a very unique people, a real tribe) slept in bunk beds. The pay and toilets were slightly better (though not by much) than in Nelson’s Royal Navy, they conducted similar watches, and had an equally bad time when faced with a 70-knot gust. This “terrifying but exciting” episode, in which the sailors move dangerously around the deck in the open air while trying to hold the rudder together, gives you goosebumps. Likewise the climb through the rigging to the mainmast with full navigation. Or when the same pole breaks brutally due to the wind and a wild wave, a large traveling wave. At the other extreme is the beauty of the sails used when sailing at full speed (“the real thing, like surfing a wave at Mavericks”), the glow of the marine life around the rose or the idyllic scenery while anchoring on the Isla Taboga.
They left Newport on January 10, 2002 and arrived in San Diego on February 15 for pre-production (in April they took “Rose” and “Surprise” to Ensenada, Mexico, where filming took place, and to Fox Studios Baja in Rosarito ; and on the Galapagos Islands). One of the onboard exercises during navigation that O’Brian could have incorporated into his novels was to throw a coconut into the water and try to retrieve it (a coconut is the appearance of a human head when someone falls in) . the water). The travelers heard more varied music than that of Locatelli and Boccherini (Weir, for his part, played both sea shanties and Pink Floyd during filming). In stark contrast to Nelson’s Marine, where grog, the drink made from rum mixed with water in a 1:4 ratio, was an institution, on the Rose voyage alcohol was forbidden during the voyage (nor were they allowed to jump into the water). ). sea from the boat). However, there were no floggings with the nine-tailed whip.
The presence of women on board under equal conditions also marks a difference from the times of Aubrey and Maturin. It is true that in O’Brian’s novels we find women on board (as passengers) and that when the British Navy docked in port it was common for prostitutes to come on board and for sex to take place below deck among the cannons (the expression ). “Son of a son” was coined). a cannon” for the children born from these relationships). We must also remember Nelson’s encouraging sentence: “After Gibraltar, every man is a bachelor.” Sofrin reminds in his book that homosexual relationships were forbidden in the Royal Navy and “sodomy” (including with goats on board) was forbidden under the Articles of War was punished with death. But he points out that a lot of eyes were probably turned a blind eye and there was “situational sexuality” on the boats. The author of All Hands on Deck began a relationship with one of his fellow sailors and included this romance as well.
An image of the frigate Rose under sail.
One of the most exciting moments in the book is when the captain announces that they are heading into waters (of Costa Rica) where the presence of modern pirates has been discovered. The weapons on board are disappointing: two swords, a musket, signal pistols, knives and boat hooks. And the frigate’s guns? The Rose only carries four six-pounders (when they arrive they’ll put the supports on it) and they have gunpowder but no cannonballs, so they’re thinking of loading it with screws and nails…
Finally, the frigate arrived safely at her appointment in Hollywood to experience the second part of her adventure: filming with all its complexities and complications. But this is another story.
All the culture that goes with it awaits you here.
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