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A
Companion for Patrick O'Brian's Seafaring
Tales
I wrote A Sea of Words in 1994
after reading the sixteen Aubrey-Maturin
books available at that time. Like many O'Brian
readers, I had discovered these books in
Richard Snow's watershed review on the cover
of the New York Times Book
Review. I clipped the review and
put it in a file for a rainy day. When the
small publisher I worked for suddenly went
belly up two years later, that rainy day
arrived, proving once again that setback
is often the door to great opportunity. With
time on my hands, I read the series in four
euphoric–at least, from a literary standpoint–months.
The plot, the humor, and the erudition of
O'Brian's roman fleuve was stunning.
From a life of reading, I quickly realized
how important this series was and how much
future readers would need a reference work.
Make no mistake, you can read these novels
without ever cracking a dictionary, encyclopedia,
or atlas. In fact, the first time through,
I did just that. But as I read, I realized
that I could get a lot more from these books
if I knew more. So I enlisted two
towering scholars in rarefied fields, John
Hattendorf, a professor of maritime history
at the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode
Island, and an expert in naval history during
the age of sail, and Worth Estes, a pharmacology
professor at Boston University, who was an
expert in medicine of the period. A friend
of mine helped me get access to the New York
Yacht Club Library, where I was able to make
use of Falconer's Dictionary and the complete
bound Naval War Chronicle, the service journal
of the day. Those were thrilling days, combing
through works two centuries old in the club's
stately wood-paneled library.
The Rigging of HMS Rose/HMS Surprise.
In
addition to essays by Hattendorf on Naval
Warfare in the age of sail and by Estes on
Naval medicine during the Napoleonic wars, A
Sea of Words is filled
with alphabetical entries on everything from
the parts of a square-rigger, to the number
of salutes to be fired on the King's birthday
and brief biographies of Cochrane, Pellew,
and, of course, Nelson. There are also many
period pictures of ships, ships' boats, naval
battles, and of the birds that Stephen Maturin
worships.
Since
its publication in 1995, I have updated A
Sea of Words twice to reflect O'Brian's
additions to the series. The book is now
complete. It was a Washington Post independent-bookstore
bestseller and was named one of the New
York Review of Books top 40,000 books
in print.
“A gem of a book.” – Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“A godsend. A must-have book.” – Irish
Times
“A third edition of A Sea of Words . . .
has just been published and is an absolute
necessity. – Boston Globe
“A Sea of Words is more than nautical terms
well explained. It is a guide to the O'Brian
library. . . . It includes medical and scientific
terms, people and political groups, historical
events, literary and biblical references,
weapons of war, natural history, curiosities,
food and drink, and cultures and customs.
. . . I like to think of it as a guide to
the fictional world of fighting sail, one
very much based on fact and authority.” – American Neptune
“A useful compass... devoted to an analysis
of the crucial threads of language and learning.” – Economist
The Patrick O'Brian Compendium
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