#Post Captain

[ola-na-tungee]

thank you Mr. O'Brian for making Jack a giant hunk with golden mane and an incredible bass voice. this man can crack SIX walnuts in one hand . I will be forever grateful

[walkthebass]

help me aubreyad tumblr. there was a great visionary among us who created a mock up of the perfect cover for Post Captain and naturally now I cannot find it. I need their greatness to be recognized and maybe also for them to see the glory in action.

[neosatsuma]

it's a beautiful day in the English Channel and you are a horrible ship. Press B to Backwards

[marcusnotbrutus]

this is an INSANE descriptor oml thank you patrick o'brien for this. I will a few days to consolidate my thoughts. the joining of my two top interests atm is too much

[hello-delicious-tea]

*crying with laughter*

STEPHEN MATURIN has a horror of ECCENTRICITY?

[pathfinderswiftpen]

"I have a horror of the least appearance of eccentricity." - Stephen Maturin, The Most Eccentric Person of His Century

[lessthansix]

‘I have your plates,’ he said, holding out a green-baize parcel. ‘Oh, thank you, thank you, Stephen. What a good fellow you are. Here’s elegance, damn my eyes. How they shine! Oh, oh,’ his face fell. ‘Stephen, I do not like to seem ungrateful, but I did say hawser-laid, you know. The border was to be hawser-laid.’ ‘Well, and did I not say, “Let there be a hawser about the periphery” and did he not say, the shopman, God’s curse upon him, the thief, “Here, sir, is as pretty a hawser as Lord Viscount Nelson himself could desire”?’ ‘And so it is. A capital hawser. But surely my dear Stephen, you must be aware, after all this time at sea, that a hawser is cable-laid, not hawser-laid?’ ‘I am not. And I absolutely decline to hear more of the matter. A hawser not hawser-laid – what stuff. I badger the silversmith early and late, and we are to be told that hawsers are not hawser-laid. No, no. The wine is drawn, it must be drunk. The frog has neither feathers nor wool, and yet she sings. You will have to sail up to the Downs, eating the bread of affliction off your cable-laid baubles, and wetting it with the tears of misery; and I may tell you, sir, that you will eat it without me. Essential business calls me away. I shall put up at the Grapes, when I am in London: I hope to be there well before Michaelmas. Pray send me a line. Good day to you, now: God bless.’

Post Captain, Patrick O’Brian

[papercranesong]

“Jack,” said he, walking into the cabin, “what are you at?” “I am trying to get this God-damned plant to stand upright. Do what I may, they keep wilting. I water them before breakfast and again in the last dog-watch, and still they wilt. Upon my word, it is too bad.”

[bomberqueen17]

Liveblogging the Aubreyad 2: Post Captain, part 1

The main thing to know about the second book in Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin series is that it's really really really fucking long.

i was trying to sum up the plot even to myself and uh. it’s like. Late in the book there’s a dated letter and I realized it literally covers an almost four-year period. So like… as Inigo Montoya says, “Let me explain. No, no there is too much. Let me sum up.” But I can’t.

I went through and summarized the whole book in detail one night when I was having an insomnia issue and it was like a fever dream, and I'd read it twice and listened to it a third time before I started this project and still was like "WAIT there's MORE?" as I kept skimming through. But I'm gonna try.

I will begin unpromisingly with some tedious background worldbuilding stuff, though. Yes the entertaining way to do this would be We Didn't Start The Fire style rapid-fire snippets but do you know how much work that is? no I spent long enough reading this book I'm not doing that for you. Sorry.

I will relent, however, and give you one exciting tidbit: this book contains female characters, plural! Yes multiples of them! Round characters, with multiple facets apiece! Enticing, no?

So the underlying mechanic beneath like, a solid 75% of the plot of these books is promotion. For every naval officer in the series, this is a large portion of their motive for every issue.

There are three categories of members of the Navy in this respect. The first one is the foremast jacks-- your enlisted men, though in this time period they were often impressed, forcibly conscripted. They can achieve various ranks within themselves, specialty crews and various small statuses and such, but even the most dignified, long-serving of them is still subject to being flogged or beaten or disciplined at any time without any real recourse.

The next category is the ratings, or warrant officers-- subtle distinctions among them, but broadly speaking on the same level. The master is in charge of the navigation and general sailing of the ship, the bosun the rigging and masts, the purser the purse (money and supplies), the gunner you can probably guess. A surgeon has a warrant rather than a commission. And the midshipmen have ratings, not commissions either.

But midshipmen are eligible for promotion to lieutenant after six years of sea time. Once they are made lieutenant, they are a commissioned officer, no longer subject to flogging or dismissal out of hand-- they must be court-martialed for such a thing to occur. They get half-pay when on shore. They accrue seniority. A lieutenant can then be promoted to master and commander, as we saw in the first book. And from there he can be promoted to a post-captain, and from there promotion is automatic (though, crucially, a command is not), according to seniority. This will become important later. A post captain will become an admiral solely through seniority, in due time when it is his turn.

But an officer who doesn't have a stellar service record AND influential friends is very likely to be sidelined regardless of seniority. Many, many men serve thirty years as a lieutenant, never promoted. Still more languish as master's mates, the seniormost rating of a midshipman's rank. And even once made post, men languish ashore, and by the time they're made admiral, have so little renown that they're never given any kind of command at all and stay ashore doing nothing more than drawing half-pay.

I'm explaining all of this because much of the series winds up being an ongoing, meditative reflection on the benefits and flaws of such a situation, and we see incompetent men promoted while competent ones are sidelined, over and over. And this book shows the beginning of Jack Aubrey's career-long struggle to not only keep himself moving up this ladder, but also to try to take some of his people with him-- especially TOM PULLINGS, who as a former foremast jack from a family of dirt farmers, has absolutely no political influence of any kind, and cannot hope for any.

(This is, I think, part of what makes this series so readable. On the face of it it seems like oh no this is some rah-rah Royal Navy bullshit, but if you actually look at it, it's a pretty warts-and-all depiction, oftentimes depressingly heavy on the warts, which is much more interesting and also easier to stomach. I did have a little trouble with the book where they're fighting the War of 1812, though, where everyone was so dispirited that the Americans kept winning and I was like "wait no I'm rooting for those guys." LOLLL.)

But you didn't come here for this. You came here to know what happens in this book. And for that, I will do my best to convey some of it. I'll lead with a couple of teasers.

there are fly honeys. oh yes.

Stephen forcefems Jack into adopting a female bear as his fursona, for literally months. No I am not making this up.

TOM PULLINGS no you'll just have to get there to see, I can't bullet point him

Jack abducts a mugger

Barret Bonden beats a cop unconscious

That's enough teasers. Let's start with the fly honeys.

Everyone is ashore, and Jack has set himself and Stephen up in a sweet bachelor pad, with a crew of his favorite sailors as household staff. (Don't you fear, Preserved Killick is here.) His nearby neighbors are a household entirely made up of women: a horrible old woman, with three reasonably hot young daughters, and an incredibly hot niece. The war is over for now (it's the Peace of Amiens) and there are no ships to be had, but Jack has some money and is ready to do some fox hunting in more than one meaning of the word.

The neighbor is called Mrs. Williams and her oldest daughter, Sophia, is 27, willowy and ethereal, innocent and appealing. But her cousin Diana, about the same age, is a young widow brought up in India, and has incomparable style and dash. Stephen is completely smitten, but makes the mistake of telling her he's not really into women as women so much as he is interested in them as people, and she spends the next age treating him like absolute shit trying to get him to admit he's into her. Meanwhile, Jack is really into Sophia, but Diana is so dashing he can't help wanting to pursue her too, and so he and Stephen wind up unhappily romantic rivals. It doesn't help that Sophia is too innocent and entirely under her mother's idiot ill-natured thumb to straightforwardly reciprocate Jack's interest.

Jack throws a huge party, to be sociable, on Valentine's Day, in honor of the Battle of Cape St Vincent, of which he is a veteran. Babbington attends, and on his way there he is to pick up Diana, who had been sent to stay with another relative for a bit to get her out of the way so Jack would pay more attention to Sophia instead, Mrs. Williams being, to put it kindly, a conniving old bitch.

Babbington, as it turns out, is a horrible driver, which leads to perhaps the single funniest passage of the book.

“… she said [to herself], 'It will never do. This young man will have to be taken down.' The lane ran straight up hill, rising higher and higher, with God knows what breakneck descent the other side. The horse slowed to a walk - the bean-fed horse, as it proved by a thunderous, long, long fart. ‘I beg your pardon,' said the midshipman in the silence. 'Oh, that's all right,' said Diana coldly. 'I thought it was the horse.' A sideways glance showed that this had settled Babbington's hash for the moment. 'Let me show you how we do it in India,' she said, gathering the reins and taking his whip away from him.

Really, Diana is amazing, and you can almost forgive her for how horribly she treats Stephen. And Jack.

Anyway the overarching plot is now beginning-- it comes up (to the reader, though not to other characters per se) that Stephen is becoming quite involved in naval intelligence; his Catalan background means he's indispensible given that the British are keenly interested in using the cause of Catalan independence to divide Spain, preventing it from effectively allying with France, which is quite openly using this peace to amass an invasion army to take England. Shit is tense, in Europe.

But meanwhile at home, various legal matters are resolved badly and it turns out that instead of being owed thousands of pounds in prize-money, Jack has to repay eleven thousand pounds to the owners of ships he took that the courts decided were in fact neutrals. And to make matters worse, his prize-agent, to whom he had entrusted the management of all the money he did earn, suddenly folds, taking all the money and running. Jack's money is just gone, with no recourse. So now Jack, according to the law of the time, is subject to arrest and imprisonment until and unless he can pay off the entire debt.

Which he can't. So he has to go into hiding. And Mrs. Williams decides that as he is in her eyes a common criminal she no longer wants him to court her daughter, so contact with Sophia is cut off, which makes them both miserable.

But Stephen has a Spanish passport. So he takes Jack across to France with him. They visit Christy-Palliere, the French ship captain who captured the Sophie in the previous book. He is delighted to see them-- so delighted that he embraces Jack and kisses him soundly on both cheeks, which makes Jack blush enormously.

And then war breaks out again. Napoleon has all British citizens in France arrested. Jack and Stephen must flee, lest they rot in a French prison for the duration of however long this round of wars lasts.

Whew that's enough plot isn't it? Oh no. There's so much more. I'll divide here. Stay tuned for Part Two, in which the bear thing will be explained, oh yes.

[hey-scully-itsme]

la belle dame sans merci

"‘Will you not let me go, Diana?’ he said, looking up, his eyes filling with tears.

‘No, no, no,’ she cried. ‘You must not leave me – go, yes go to France – but write to me, write to me, and come back.’ She gripped him hard with her small hand, and she was away, the turf flying behind her horse." – Post Captain, Patrick O'Brian

[ola-na-tungee]

Post Captain in which Stephen and Jack share a cottage. every single phrase in this chapter is gold

[neosatsuma]

"If I had 60,000 bees (on a ship) and your sweetheart was coming aboard (the ship), then I would send my bees away for you 🥺" sure is a sentence one could say. and well. if you are Captain Jack Aubrey of Patrick O'Brian's famed historical novels, beginning with Master and Commander, well . well then you will Say it.

[knightotoc]

"And there was no greater proof of their friendship than the way their harmony withstood their very grave differences in domestic behavior.

"In Jack's opinion, Stephen was little better than a slut: his papers, odd bits of dry garlic bread, his razors and smallclothes lay on and about his private table in a miserable squalor. And from the appearance of the grizzled wig that was now acting as a tea cozy for his milk saucepan, it was clear that he had breakfasted on marmalade.

"Jack took off his coat, covered his waistcoat and britches with an apron, and carried the dishes into the scullery."

-- Post Captain, Patrick O'Brian

[dragnew]

posts that have 10,000 notes to me

[explorersaremadeofhope]

Fellas is it gay to dress another man in a fursuit and lead him around on a leash for weeks in the name of strategic subterfuge

[lessthansix]

It was Paris, with a rectangular sail-cloth parcel. Stephen ran to him, took it from his arms with infinite precaution and set it on the table, pressing his ear to its side. ‘Listen, Jack,’ he said, smiling. ‘Put your ear firmly to the top and listen while I tap.’ The parcel gave a sudden momentary hum. ‘Did you hear? That shows they are queen-right – that no harm has come to their queen. But we must open it at once; they must have air. There! A glass hive. Is it not ingenious, charming? I have always wanted to keep bees.’ ‘But how in God’s name do you expect to keep bees in a man-of-war?’ cried Jack. ‘Where in God’s name do you expect them to find flowers, at sea? How will they eat?’ ‘You can see their every motion,’ said Stephen, close against the glass, entranced. ‘Oh, as for their feeding, never fret your anxious mind; they will feed with us upon a saucer of sugar, at stated intervals. If the ingenious Monsieur Huber can keep bees, and he blind, the poor man, surely we can manage in a great spacious xebec?’ ‘This is a frigate.’ ‘Let us never split hairs, for all love. There is the queen! Come, look at the queen!’ ‘How many of those reptiles might there be?’ asked Jack, holding pretty much aloof. ‘Oh, sixty thousand or so, I dare say,’ said Stephen carelessly. ‘And when it comes on to blow, we will ship gimbals for the hive. This will preserve them from undue lateral motion.’ ‘You think of almost everything,’ said Jack.

Post Captain, Patrick O’Brian