Fourteen years prior to publication in 1970 of Master and Commander, the first of now seventeen titles in The Aubrey/Maturin Novels series, author Patrick O'Brian wrote The Golden Ocean. This was not his first novel. It was however the initial model for the extraordinary series that followed. Why a fourteen-year gap occurred between The Golden Ocean and Master and Commander is a question literary scholars might investigate. Their results would be of prime interest to the legions of Patrick O'Brian readers throughout the world.
An interesting similarity exists between this author's work and that of the famous subject of O'Brian's first biographical work. Pablo Picasso set aside his watershed painting, "Demoiselles d'Avignon," temporarily walking away from what was to become one of the greatest masterpieces of twentieth century art, and continued his work on just plain old ordinary masterpieces. The results of Pablo shying away from the Demoiselles stalled the birth of Cubism for ten years. Picasso's friends, fellow artists and art-expert acquaintances were not exactly encouraging when they saw the huge canvas filled with huge women. According to Patrick O'Brian, "They could not grasp it at all: their only reactions were shock, alarm, regret, dismay, some nervous or indignant laughter."
It is doubtful that The Golden Ocean met such a storm of reaction upon publication. Perhaps there was little or no reaction upon publication, otherwise Master and Commander would have been written in 1957 instead of 1970. The mid-1950s were the dawning of the Space Age. The world was more interested then in watching Vanguard and Redstone rockets blow up on their launch pads, not in reading, "There you mooncalf," shrieked Peter. "There it's The Great South Sea itself, the golden ocean, and we are sailing upon it, joy."
Devoted readers of The Aubrey/Maturin Novels will find much pleasure in reading The Golden Ocean. While not as deep as what was to come over a decade later, this novel still contains rich character detail, astounding knowledge of the sailing navy, and the powder-dry humour that has become Patrick O'Brian's trademark style. Missing are the dense subtexts and subtleties developed naturally and satisfyingly over the years of writing about two very powerful lead characters: Captain Jack Aubrey of the circa nineteenth-century British Royal Navy; and naval surgeon, naturalist, swordsman and spy, Stephen Maturin. O'Brian has expertly and lovingly developed a perfectly believable world starting with this novel. The same world, seen by two characters with definite and different points of view based on their particular, fictionalized birthrights, religious leanings, politics, physical sizes, education or lack of it, musicianship, and occupations---public and private---written into novels over twenty four years.
The Golden Ocean is seen almost entirely from the point of view of one who serves before the mast. It is the story of a young midshipman, Peter Palafox, who leaves his farm in Ireland and heads off to sea aboard H.M.S. Centurion. His life at sea is spent with other midshipmen, in a cramped and usually damp space called the Midshipmen's Berth. This is a place below decks and toward the bow of the ship in front of the main mast. The Aubrey/Maturin Novels have a definite view from the captain's cabin, always at the ship's stern.
The midshipmen and crew of the Centurion often get out on deck and even in this early stage of O'Brian's naval novels, the prose contains fine passages. While at the southernmost tip of South America near an island called Staten Island, off the eastern coast of Tierra Del Fuego, they all stare out and up at a wall of cliffs, ". . . for those of Staten Island soared black and naked up to eternal snow, with never a tree or a kindly beach to alleviate their malignity."
Later, even further away from the midshipmen's berth and the decks of the Centurion, Peter and his crew are hunting wild boar. One of the smaller midshipmen is sent into a patch of jungle to flush out the animal. First the small midshipman bursts out of the bush and, ". . . then the gravid, persecuting sow, with glaring crimson eyes, skimming over the flowery turf, the embodiment of pallid fury." Familiar prose style to O'Brian readers. A style that fascinates and eliminates readers equally.
If you have never read a Patrick O'Brian book, The Golden Ocean is a fine starting point. For if you enjoy this book, you will have begun a series of stories that grow richer and increasingly satisfying novel after novel, and they are all readily available like vials of laudanum in an addicted naval surgeon's own sea chest.
Currently there are more books available by Patrick O'Brian than at any other time. Besides The Aubrey/Maturin Novels, his first novel, Testimonies (1952) is available in a new hardcover edition. Patrick O'Brian: Critical Essays and a Bibliography, edited by A.E. Cunningham (1994), is not to be confused with Patrick O'Brian: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography, also 1994, the British edition of the same book, and a more accurate title than that of the aforementioned American edition. Most of the book is comment written by others about O'Brian. Critical essays might be read as essays of critique by O'Brian, which definitely exist, but not in this book, whereas Appreciations seems to better indicate a tide flowing toward the author, not away. There are two stories and a brief comment by O'Brian in this book, all of it worthwhile reading, and must reading for true fans. Then, Patrick O'Brian Collected Short Stories (1994), his stories written between 1950 and 1974, published by HarperCollins. The Golden Ocean, Testimonies, and the essays and appreciations books are all published by Norton.
If you do attempt to complete a collection of The Aubrey/Maturin Novels, be warned that Clarissa Oakes and The Truelove are the same book, with the same cover art, the former published by Harper Collins in England, the latter published by Norton in the United States, both in 1992. Why, after fifteen titles published consistently in England, inconsistently in the USA, all with the same titles, there is this blip is another question for the literary scholars. All subsequent Patrick O'Brian novels published on both sides of the not-so-golden ocean have had the same titles.
The Commodore (1994) is the latest Aubrey/Maturin novel.
Marv Newland, highly susceptible to seasickness, is a dry land animated cartoon maker residing in Vancouver.