Aubrey-Maturin



""It is all one," said Stephen. "They speak in tropes at sea.""

- HMS Surprise (Book 3)

''This is about the series of novels. For the film, consult said page.''

Twenty-book series written by pseudo-Irish author Patrick O'Brian (born Richard Patrick Russ). The series takes place during the Napoleonic Wars, following the adventures of an English naval captain, Jack Aubrey, and his surgeon and particular friend, Stephen Maturin, who also works for Naval Intelligence. O'Brian also wrote the first couple of chapters of a 21st book before his death, which have since been published, along with his notes about what happened afterward.

The books start with Jack first meeting Stephen and getting his first command, and go on with no particular overriding plot, though there are several arcs carried through multiple books. Their beginning, middle and end points are also arbitrary; they read something like one very big novel.

Titles in the Series (Year of First Edition)

 * 1) Master and Commander (1969)
 * 2) Post Captain (1972)
 * 3) HMS Surprise (1973)
 * 4) The Mauritius Command (1977)
 * 5) Desolation Island (1978)
 * 6) The Fortune of War (1979)
 * 7) The Surgeon's Mate (1980)
 * 8) The Ionian Mission (1981)
 * 9) Treason's Harbour (1983)
 * 10) The Far Side of the World (1984)
 * 11) The Reverse of the Medal (1986)
 * 12) The Letter of Marque (1988)
 * 13) The Thirteen-Gun Salute (1989)
 * 14) The Nutmeg of Consolation (1991)
 * 15) Clarissa Oakes (1992) (The Truelove in the USA)
 * 16) The Wine-Dark Sea (1993)
 * 17) The Commodore (1994)
 * 18) The Yellow Admiral (1996)
 * 19) The Hundred Days (1998)
 * 20) Blue at the Mizzen (1999)
 * 21) The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey (2004, unfinished and published posthumously)

The series was adapted into a 2003 film starring Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, which was intended to become the first installment in a series of films. Several books, among them Master and Commander and The Far Side of the World, were used as inspiration for the film.

Novice readers are sometimes advised to start with the third book, H.M.S. Surprise, to acclimate themselves to the relatively laborious, jargon-laden prose style with a more action-y plot before they attempt to read the two earlier volumes. Even experienced readers are advised to acquire a copy of Dean King's Sea of Words, the 500+ page handbook and lexicon companion to the series. King's Harbors and High Seas can also be useful to the reader, as it includes all the necessary maps to keep track of where events happened during the series, as well as the state of the world at the time. It is important to note that it is entirely possible to read the series without these aids; they are useful, but as one of the two main characters' jobs in the series is to have the essential naval matters explained to him, even if the reader does not know exactly what a "waister" is, the action of the book will still make sense.

Nelson's Navy: The Ships, Men, and Organization, 1793-1815 by Brian Lavery is also an excellent companion to the series, but rather pricey. And for the culinary-minded, there's Lobscouse and Spotted Dog: Which It's a Gastronomic Companion to the Aubrey/Maturin Novels by Anne Chotzinoff Grossman and Lisa Grossman Thomas.

Compare with: Horatio Hornblower.

For film examples, go to Master and Commander The Far Side of The World.

Now has its own character page.

"Aubrey: They have chosen their cake, and must lie in it. Maturin: You mean, they cannot have their bed and eat it. Aubrey: No, no, it is not quite that, neither. I mean? I wish you would not confuse my mind, Stephen."
 * A Father to His Men: Jack Aubrey, who looks after his personal followers (the midshipmen and lieutenants who serve under him) as well as he can throughout their careers. The midshipmen in particular, as they usually come to him as 11-14 year old children, and he takes a personal hand in their educations and moral well-being. He also has his foremast Nakama in his bargemen, common seamen who follow him from ship to ship and are the ones protecting his back when he leads a boarding action.
 * Part of the reason Jack always feels terrible after a battle is that he has to write letters home explaining which of his friends died and how.
 * A Man Is Always Eager: Jack Aubrey is often "pierced with his own sword", as a delirious Stephen once puts it, because he never will learn how to say no.
 * Babbington is this trope on steroids. When the ship is in port, expect him to find a woman. At one point Jack dresses him down in public for contriving to get himself a ship full of Lesbians
 * Addiction Displacement: Dr. Maturin, over the course of many novels, develops a powerful addiction to the (opium-based) tincture of laudanum. After successfully kicking the habit, he finds a perfectly healthy substitute, one he knows to be non-addictive... the coca leaves chewed by the natives of Peru. And when Maturin's supply of that drug is accidentally consumed by the ship's rats (Hilarity Ensues), Maturin takes to smoking cigars much more frequently.
 * All Devouring Black Hole Loan Sharks: Driving most of the plot of book two.
 * The Alleged Ship:
 * "The horrible old Leopard." Jack tries gamely to defend the fifty-gun ship as "the finest fourth-rate in the service," though at the time it was a class of two, with the other, Grampus, being even more self-evidently horrible a ship.
 * The "scientifically designed" Polychrest, aka "The Carpenter's Mistake." Built to carry an abandoned Secret Weapon, then used as a conventional ship-sloop, with sharp ends at both bow and stern. Not only did Polychrest miss stays on her maiden attempt to leave port, she also sailed backwards in the process.
 * The ancient tub of a merchantman that carries Sam Panda from Jamaica to Brazil, where he is to begin his ministry, in The Surgeon's Mate. Her barely-trained crew and her terrible sailing qualities lead to her barely weathering the Kingston headland and avoiding capsize only by what is generally agreed to be Divine Intervention, and while Jack prays for a guardian angel to look over Sam, he does wish that it wouldn't require watch after watch of them just to get him to Brazil.
 * All There in the Manual : Can't make heads or tails of the nautical jargon and historical references? There's a 500+ page lexicon and handbook to go along with the series.
 * Aluminium Christmas Trees: Aubrey's crews can sometimes seem like Politically-Correct History, but it was commonplace at the time for the Royal Navy to recruit any able seamen they could find, be they white, black, Chinese or even French. Early in his command, to get his point across to a couple of pressed American sailors, Jack promotes a black sailor to bosun's mate.
 * Amazon Brigade: The crew of the pahi that rescues Jack and Stephen in The Far Side of the World.
 * Animals Hate Him:
 * Nathaniel Martin is almost as dedicated a naturalist as Stephen Maturin, but unlike Stephen, is almost invariably bitten or otherwise abused by the animals he studies. He has one eye... not Eyepatch of Power due to battle or dueling, but due to an unfortunate encounter with an owl. (On the other hand, Maturin is the one who contrives to get poisoned by a platypus in Australia.)
 * To a lesser extent, Jack Aubrey himself. Little luck with horses, even less with the menagerie of animals that Stephen brings aboard throughout his journeys. Special mention goes to the three-toed sloth that burst into tears when it saw him and had to be won over with alcohol (leading to one of the best lines in all of literature), and the wombat that chewed up his best hat, gold lace and all.
 * Anyone Can Die: Beginning with The Hundred Days and the series' nearing the end of the wars, some very major characters are killed off in essentially random and undramatic fashion.
 * Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: "A slaughtered crew, a sunken ship, and my collections destroyed..."
 * Not to compare it with the loss of life, but it WAS a unique and irreplacable collection personally gathered from all over the world as he traveled with the British Navy.
 * Audience Surrogate: Neatly averted using the Fish Out of Water nature of the characters of both Aubrey and Maturin--on land and at sea respectively. When the narrative needs something about Napoleonic-era shipboard life explained to the audience, it has the ignorant Stephen ask it of Jack, and when the narrative needs something about Napoleonic-era science or politics explained to the audience it has the ignorant Jack ask it of Stephen.
 * Auto Erotica: Stephen arranges a rendezvous for Jack and Sophie in a carriage on a moor at midnight.
 * Autopsy Snack Time: Stephen and a fellow naturalist move immediately from dissection to dinner, using the same knife.
 * Aw, Look -- They Really Do Love Each Other: in The Letter of Marque Stephen finally resolves to make a clean break of his up-until-then ambiguous relationship with Diana, but after talking with her--and discovering Wray's interception of his letters--he definitively changes his mind. After that there's really no doubt.
 * Badass Bookworm:
 * Stephen Maturin is a 5'6", gaunt, clumsy, "small, indefinably odd and even ill-looking" man as well as a doctor, polyglot, natural philosopher and all-round intellectual. He is also Britain's greatest spy. Over the course of the books he is seen shooting the pips out of playing cards, winning several duels, operating on himself, and dispatching his enemies in very badass ways. And then dissecting them.
 * Jack Aubrey also qualifies, in spite of being a bit less heavy on the Bookworm. He is a war hero and immensely successful naval commander who is also, along with his good friend Dr. Maturin, a Fellow of the Royal Society (Britain's most prestigious academic society). He has written a number of well-received papers on astronomy and geometry, and built his own observatory and telescopes.
 * Bad Boss: Captain Harte, all-around Jerkass. Hates Aubrey with a passion, and is responsible for preventing his promotion to Post Captain after the capture of the Cacafuego based on a legal technicality (for which Aubrey's crew came up with a very unflattering sea shanty penned in Harte's [dis]honor).
 * Based on a True Story: The first book, Master and Commander, is closely based on the adventures of Thomas Cochrane and the sloop Speedy, down to the capturing of a Spanish ship twice her size with a mixture of cunning and bravery. The other books mix and match bits from many different captains and battles in the period, but Aubrey is clearly based on Cochrane (who encountered similar troubles with All Devouring Black Hole Loan Sharks, and also inspired at least one other fictional Royal Navy captain, Horatio Hornblower).
 * Battle in the Rain: Leopard vs. Waakzeimheid was carried out in a huge South Atlantic storm; the first ship to momentarily lose control due to battle damage would broach and be swamped.
 * Benevolent Boss: Jack believes in running a tightly-disciplined, taut, but happy ship. His sailors love him and would follow him to hell and back for it.
 * Berserk Button: it's always dangerous to disparage the Irish and the Catholics around Stephen, who is both. He doesn't mind when Jack occasionally puts his foot in his mouth with anti-Catholic sentiment, though, since he knows Jack never does it intentionally, and he always apologizes for it.
 * Blood Knight: James Dillon in the first book lives for combat, and at least once expresses to Maturin that he understands but does not share in Aubrey's lust for prizes.
 * Broken Bird: Clarissa Oakes.
 * Camp Follower: Where sailors are, whores will be.
 * The Captain: Jack is the example par excellance, but the series explores in close detail how the authority of a captain can bring negative character traits to the fore; as a result, there are plenty of successful captains, and plenty of unsuccessful ones.
 * Catch Phrase:
 * Aubrey's amused "What a fellow you are, Stephen," when Maturin persistently misunderstands naval life.
 * Stephen has his various Irish/Catholic sayings: "the Dear knows", "God between us and evil", and the like.
 * Adopted by both Stephen and Jack, as a reflection of the Navy's insistence on strict timekeeping: "there is not a moment to be lost!"
 * The Chains of Commanding: Jack has to write letters home to the parents of the officers and the midshipmen killed under his command. Additionally, the authority of the position means that it's nearly impossible for a captain and his officers to really become friends, a kind of social burden that falls on Jack quite often.
 * Chekhov's Gun:
 * In The Truelove, Jack, searching for a suitable material for Clarissa Harvill's wedding dress, lends her some of a bolt of high-quality scarlet silk that he bought in Batavia for Sophie.
 * Too many to count show up in the context of single books. For instance, while outfitting the Sophie, Jack scounges up a couple buckets of yellow paint at the start of Master and Commander; half the book later, after meeting a very similar-looking Danish brig whose only real difference is that they're painted with a yellow stripe instead of the Nelson chequer, that paint comes in handy for a disguise.
 * Chekhov's Gunman: Or in this case, Chekhov's Gunwoman. At the beginning of The Surgeon's Mate, Jack, irritated and upset because he has apparently received no mail from Sophie during his imprisonment in Boston, has a brief fling with a young woman in Halifax, whom he meets at a ball celebrating the Shannon's victory over the Chesapeake.
 * Another good example: In Desolation Island, Stephen, while visiting Jack, accompanies the latter to his local club, where Jack participates in a regular card game. While watching, Stephen observes that one of the other players seems to be cheating, and informs Jack. Jack later tells Stephen that he called the other fellow on it.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Dr. Maturin, frequently. The whole world could be blowing up around his ears, and he'd be prancing about the ship with a rare snake or a pair of mating insects or somesuch. Of course, that assumes he didn't cause the explosion in question, in which case see Crowning Moment of Awesome.
 * Clueless Chick Magnet: Jagiello, the handsome Lithuanian nobleman and a close friend to Jack and Stephen. He speaks passionately of the day that he'd meet a woman who can see him as an equal--considerably harder than it looks considering all the pretty ladies who throw themselves at him.
 * Cold-Blooded Torture: Happens to Maturin early in the series, much to Aubrey's horror, and afterwards is a danger very much on his mind whenever he's at risk of being found out as a secret agent.
 * Cold Sniper: We don't learn the exact details of the encounter, but Stephen apparently kills two villains with a rifle at long range... and then almost immediately brings them to a colleague's house, where the two of them calmly dissect the bodies.
 * Colourful Theme Naming: Aubrey and his friend and fellow post-captain Heneage Dundas discuss the captain of HMS Iris, who not only wants to dress his bargemen in the colors of the rainbow (due to the connotation of his ships name), but specifically seeks out sailors named for said colors: e.g., with surnames like "Scarlett," "White," or "Green." He offered Dundas a brass "chaser" cannon in exchange for one of his sailors whose name was Blew. (Dundas declined, sharing with Aubrey a dislike for "costumed" bargemen.)
 * Combat Medic: Dr. Maturin.
 * Come to Gawk: The pillory is shown in one novel. And then it turns into a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming when Maturin arranges hundred of sailors Jack has known over the years to come and guard Jack while he's there.
 * Comic Book Time: O'Brian moved the series into this after a few books when he realized he was quickly running out of Napoleonic War years. O'Brian somehow manages to squeeze what would properly be at least five, perhaps even ten years' worth of action into a period of less than 6 months, roughly spanning June 1813 (the end of The Fortune of War) to November 1813 (the beginning of The Commodore). Time resumes its normal sequence with The Yellow Admiral; the last completed book in the series, Blue at the Mizzen, presumably ends in early 1816. Lampshaded when Maturin asks near the end of the series just how old his daughter is.
 * Companion Cube: Jack's violin. He's had it since he was a boy and is very distraught when it breaks.
 * Completely Missing the Point: Jack thinks Hamlet is an utterly hilarious play. See Crosscast Role below.
 * Cool Boat: The Sophie in book one. The Surprise in most of the series. The Polychrest was probably intended to be this by her architect, but ends up useless and bizarre. Jack, being made of awesome, nevertheless manages to get some good use out of her.
 * Also slightly subverted in book one, as the Sophie is very much the Age of Sail equivalent of a rustbucket. She's called a brig, a three-masted ship, but is actually a sloop, which is two-masted. (Yay for Royal Navy social promotion - a sloop is only a lieutenant's command, so any ship given to a commander automatically becomes a brig or better, regardless of what it actually is.) Worse, she's dead slow, under-sailed, under-manned and under-gunned. Through clever naval and (ahem) social engineering, Aubrey manages to turn her into a top-notch commerce raider anyway.
 * No, she is a brig, which is two-masted, and is called a sloop, which would have been single-masted. An "unrated vessel," such as a schooner or cutter, was a lieutenant's command; anything given to a commander became a sloop. (Having trouble understanding this? Don't feel bad - Stephen never quite got it all straight either.)
 * Even the Surprise is outdated and undergunned compared to Frigates of the time (being 28 gun at a time when new Frigates had guns in the mid 30s, and 44 gun Frigates were starting to appear), but does have the advantage of being fast, especially into the wind. Even when built, the French classed her as a Corvette (a type of fast, light Frigate).
 * And the Surprise would have been even more outclassed if she hadn't been heavily rebuilt quietly off-page somewhere. The real Surprise (credited with the same recapture of the Hermione) carried 24 8pdr long guns, or a bunch of carronades. Aubrey's Surprise, however, seems to end up with 28 main-deck 12pdrs, which are about twice the size. In real life, she would be massively overgunned for her hull, and she is still outclassed.
 * Jack is the man who tried to mount a nine-pound chaser on a sixty-foot ship. Considering the leeway he has in the fitting out of the Surprise and how well he knows her, you think he isn't going to fit as many guns as he possibly can on her?
 * Fair point, but 28 12pdrs would have broken the back of the actual ship, even if you could physically fit them on. The 12pdrs would weigh about three times as much as the 8s.
 * Corrupt Politician: Politicians don't feature too commonly, but corruption was the norm for the day. Aubrey's father, General Aubrey, is an MP from a pocket district that Aubrey later inherits. Aubrey's father wasn't too scrupulous, managing to get his son convicted of the 19th century of insider trading by not keeping a secret. Aubrey also has some unscrupulous political enemies.
 * Crosscast Role: Jack played one-third of Ophelia as a midshipman. Yes. One-third.
 * Cult: Several benign versions turn up among the Shelmerston sailors. Shelmerston is described as having a bewildering variety of obscure Christian (and even a few Judaic) sects. Many of the sailors are Sethians, who especially venerate Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. Knipperdollings and Thraskites are also mentioned, among others.
 * The Sethians' practices cause some difficulty at one point when they paint the name of their revered patriarch on the side of the Surprise. In a neat exercise of diplomacy, Jack persuades his Sethian crewmen to cover the painting up, explaining that it's not fitting for impious eyes to see such a holy name.
 * Cultured Warrior : Aubrey and Maturin met during a musical performance, and play violin and cello (respectively) together. They're both enthusiastic amateurs.
 * Maturin is cruelly tortured by French agents at one point early on in the series, losing a significant portion of the more delicate abilities of his hands, so
 * Dr. Maturin is a natural philosopher first and foremost, a physician second, a spy third, and wraps it all up by being quite good at armed combat.
 * In The Letter of Marque, he takes part in the assault on St. Martin to "cut out" (seize) the French frigate Diane with pistol and cutlass, shooting down the captain of the French warship during the proceedings.
 * In later installments of the series, Aubrey is noted as being a member of the Royal Society (as is Maturin), specializing in astronomy and mathematics, having submitted several well-received papers and presentations to the body on various astronomical topics. He is a friend of the sister of the famous British astronomer William Herschel; the sister tutored him in the art of building telescopes, and Aubrey constructs his own observatory (which we first see in 'The Mauritius Command' and later in 'The Commodore'). Jack is a friend and correspondent of Alexander Humboldt, and in the novel arc from The Thirteen-Gun Salute through The Wine-Dark Sea, is described taking extensive measurements of air and sea conditions in various regions on behalf of the latter, having been provided with a complete set of state-of-the art instruments for the purpose. In the last completed book of the series, Blue at the Mizzen, Jack and Stephen are seen convivially fraternizing with the members of a Royal Society expedition.
 * Again in Blue at the Mizzen, this trope is seen when Jack and Stephen examine the illegitimate son of the Duke of Clarence (eventually to become William IV) to determine his fitness to ship aboard the Surprise. The examination is very much a tag team affair, as Jack quizzes the lad on astronomy, mathematics and navigation, while Stephen tests his knowledge of language and other liberal arts.
 * Dark and Troubled Past: Stephen is illegitimate and an orphan, fostered in the back and beyond, sent from uncaring relative to relative, spends time in several prisons in Spain and Portugal, a Catholic who goes to a Protestant university in his mid-teens, survives the Terror, flees to Ireland, survives the 1798 rebellion, loses Mona, loses Lord Edward Fitzgerald, becomes a fugitive, and ends up penniless. All before the first page of the first book.
 * As an adolescent, he also spends "a long time" locked in a prison cell with a convicted rapist. I'm just saying.
 * Darker and Edgier: While Horatio Hornblower is what most people thing of when they think of Wooden Ships and Iron Men, this is a close second. At no point in the Hornblower series does anyone say "fucking", for starters, nor are issues like homosexuality, pederasty, bestiality, or porn mentioned much, if at all. Keep in mind Hornblower regularly has people hit by cannon-balls, and its remarkable that someone could get much darker, but O'Brien managed it.
 * It needs to be taken into account that C.S. Forester was writing in the early part of the 20th century, a much more straitlaced era for mainstream literature; O'Brian, who wrote the series over a period spanning the late 1960's to his death in 2000, had much more freedom to write about the topics mentioned above.
 * Jack and Stephen are much more joyful than Horatio and suffer through much less tragedy (though they have their share of troubles, by all means). Jack also believes in the Royal Navy much more than Hornblower.
 * Which is what Lord St. Vincent says to Jack when the latter has the temerity to ask him for a ship in Post Captain. Also a bit of a Precision F-Strike when it does show up (there's one from Thomas Pullings as well).
 * The series takes its own Darker and Edgier turn following the death of O'Brian's wife in Real Life.
 * Death by Materialism:
 * French agent Duhamel, after helping Maturin and the British and being given passage to Québec for his troubles, dies in Black Comedy fashion. Having converted his entire fortune to gold (though out of what seems more prudence than materialism) and carrying it concealed around his waist, the poor gentleman then manages to fall in the gap between boat and ship (as Dr. Maturin often does) and sink to his doom, pulled down by the weight of the gold.
 * Tragic example with
 * Defector From Decadence: French Interservice Rivalry--literally deadly serious--finally gets too much for the Consummate Professional Duhamel, who defects over to the British side and reveals Wray as the mole.
 * Destination Defenestration: alluded to in Aubrey's dealings with Kimber's lawyers. Also a reason why he was impatient to put out to sea until it all blew over--Aubrey might be Lucky Jack on the ocean, but he does have a tendency to get in sticky situations on shore.
 * Did Not Do the Research: very few instances in this series. The most notable one is probably more a case of "Did Not Do Enough Research" - on several occasions, a disease called the "marthambles" is mentioned. O'Brian apparently took it to be a nautical name for a disease better-known ashore under another name, but if he had dug a bit deeper into his contemporary sources, he'd have found that it was basically a fictional malady.
 * Maturin being a Catalan separatist, a century before such a thing existed.
 * In the pre-Aubrey-Maturin book Unknown Shore, the protagonists fall in with some coastal Indians who live "at the edge of starvation" but do not have the technology to preserve meat in any way. The in-story explanation for this is that their environment is too moist, but they are sealers: the seal poke, a sealskin bag full of seal oil, is a perfectly viable method of storing meat, and used by many different people who live along the Canadian coastline, particularly the Eskimo. Storing meat is, in fact, a survival skill not just possessed by human cultures that live at the edge of starvation, but by your actual wolves.
 * Aubrey and Maturin first meet at a concert in Port Mahon to the sounds of "the triumphant first movement of Locatelli's C-Major quartet". Locatelli is not known to have written any quartets.
 * Actually, throughout the series O'Brian references pieces of music not known to exist, though often bearing a close resemblance to actual works (e.g., "Old" Bach's famous Ciaccona).
 * Drives Like Crazy: Diana, though she's an unusually skillful example of the trope. Jagiello tries but fails, since in Lithuania the peasants are expected to get out of the way when the noblemen come hurtling through--which is decidedly not the case in England. The sailors' driving fails to qualify only due to their slowness, since they're used to hauling on the reins with a force more appropriate for the rigging of a small boat, though upsets are common.
 * The Drunken Sailor: Prevalent. The amounts of alcohol routinely consumed by the characters are astonishing by modern standards. Sometimes a character (e.g., frequently, Killick when ashore) will be referred to as drunk "even by naval standards."
 * Duet Bonding
 * The Dung Ages: Often upheld on land, but strongly subverted in anything having to do with the Royal Navy, especially the ships. Much is made of the Navy's fanatical attention to neatness and cleanliness, to the extent that there are several funny moments where Stephen hears his shipmates remark disapprovingly on the slovenly/filthy state of a certain ship, but himself can't see much of anything wrong. On a more serious note, Stephen remarks several times that the Navy's devotion to cleanliness translates into a significantly lower rate of infection and disease aboard ship than on shore. (Note that on the one occasion where a plague stalks the ship's - in this instance the Leopard's crew, in Desolation Island, the disease was brought aboard by a group of convicts that the Leopard was conveying to Botany Bay.)
 * Eek! a Mouse!: Well, a Snake. Jack Aubrey has a serious fear of snakes, and at one point in Master and Commander jumps up onto a chair when one crawls into the room, not coming down until Stephen removes it. Stephen doesn't help matters any by being a Deadpan Snarker about it, pulling Jack's leg about the (nonpoisonous) snake being a deadly and aggressive viper.
 * Even French Intelligence Services Have Standards: Wray and Ledward murdering their own agents to safeguard their own fortunes is the main reason behind Duhamel's defection.
 * Evil Matriarch: Mrs. Williams is overbearing, badgering, and apparently loves to make Jack and Sophie's lives hell. For all that, though, she is a decent manager of money, though she is not above running illegal schemes to make it.
 * Fixing the Game: It's strongly implied that the reason Jack loses many pounds at whist in book 2 is because his interlocutors are cheating. That Jack accuses them of this loudly and in public is the driving force behind a Smug Snake picking up the Villain Ball.
 * Foreshadowing: In one of the later books there is a section describing a transit on a post-chaise which includes a quite narrow and tricky bridge coming at the bottom of a hill. A couple of books later
 * Frozen in Time: Around book 7, O'Brian realized he was running out of Napoleonic War in which the story could take place, so he put the year 1813 on constant loop for the next 10 books). Fans like to characterize certain actions as taking place in 1812 or 1812a.
 * Gentle Giant: Padeen is a very large, strong man whose compassionate nature makes him an excellent nurse.
 * Good-Looking Privates: Ladies, meet Captain Jack Aubrey or, as we call him in the service, Goldilocks.
 * Hook Hand: after William Reade gets his hand blown off, he has it replaced with a hook.
 * Heterosexual Life Partners
 * Or maybe not. Hello, Aubrey/Maturin fanbase, it's nice to see you, too.
 * Not that there is any shortage of actual Ho Yay. The Royal Navy has its "rum, sodomy and the lash," of course, but even a surprising (considering when the books were written) number of the characters on the shore are described as homosexual. Oh, and two words: Jupitar. Ganymede. Readers of Thirteen Gun Salute will know that I'm talking about.
 * Of course, the entire fanbase is, by definition, the Aubrey/Maturin fanbase.
 * It doesn't help clarify matters any that in that day and age, it was quite ordinary for heterosexual men to use endearments such as "my dear" when talking to their close male friends. Jack generally prefers to address Stephen as "brother", though.
 * Historical Domain Character: both the French captain Christy-Palliere and the British Heneage Dundas really existed. Interestingly, Master and Commander in particular was heavily based on the real-life exploits of Captain Cochrane (particularly the Sophie-vs-Cacafuego/Speedy-vs-Gama duel, accurate down to the number of guns and the number of crew), who really was captured by Christy-Palliere in the same way that Jack Aubrey was captured--and the real-life Christy-Palliere was so impressed by Cochrane's exploits that he refused to accept his sword in surrender, the same as Aubrey.
 * Honey Trap: French agents try to compromise Stephen in Malta with Mrs. Fielding, the wife of a captured British officer, in combination with implied blackmail (Lt. Fielding's death sentence would be continually delayed so long as she cooperated). It doesn't work; Laura Fielding is too nervous, and Stephen too perceptive that something is up. He manages to get Laura to tell him the truth, and then works out a plan to protect her from French intelligence by pretending to be her lover.
 * I Never Got Any Letters: after the Honey Trap situation described above, which quite naturally leads to rumors, Stephen writes a (partial) explanation of the matter to Diana, basically asking her to trust him. Unfortunately, he left the letter to Wray, and so Diana does not receive it. This leads to a misunderstanding between the two that persists from Treason's Harbour to The Letter of Marque, when Stephen finally tries to break with Diana for good--only to finally piece together the truth and reconcile with her.
 * Informed Self Diagnosis: Stephen is generally quite good at this, with the notable exception of failing to diagnose his own addiction to the alcoholic tincture of laudanum.
 * Innocent Innuendo: by the end of The Surgeon's Mate, when Stephen and Diana are finally reunited onboard the Oedipus, Jack strides out onto the quarterdeck and complains disgustedly that "they're going at it hammer and tongs, like they've been married this past twelvemonth and more." He was actually referencing their
 * In-Series Nickname: Aubrey is referred to as "Goldilocks" by the crew (though never to his face, of course), for his blonde hair. In the wider world, he's well known as "Lucky Jack Aubrey" for his good fortune in capturing prizes.
 * Instant Leech Just Fall in Water: * In Blue at the Mizzen, Stephen Maturin and Christine Wood fall into brackish West African mud. Afterwards, each is covered with "astonishingly numerous and avid leeches." They use salt (brought by Christine for this purpose) to remove the leeches.
 * It's Personal: implied for the captain of the Waakzeimheid; after the first few exchanges of fire, he is seen wearing a black coat, and chasing Leopard despite suicidal weather for battle. Jack wonders if his son had died in their skirmishing.
 * It Got Worse: A few examples, but the end of Desolation Island springs to mind.
 * Joke Ship: The Polychrest.
 * The Klutz: Stephen somehow contrives to get into accident after accident at sea, ranging from falling out of the boat to somehow turning a complete somersault in a particularly violent sea. As a result, the seamen around him look upon with real affection and considerable respect for his medical prowess--and stand wary in case he manages to take yet another improbably at every possible opportunity.
 * Just Friends:
 * Stephen and Diana, for much of the series. (They Do, in The Surgeon's Mate.)
 * Padeen seems to be stuck in one of these in regards to Clarissa.
 * In the later books,.
 * Last-Name Basis: Used accurately, as during that period only the very most intimate friends or lovers would address one another by unadorned first name. Except for Jack, all of Stephen's old comrades/shipmates - and by the end of the series he has amassed a very wide circle of naval friends - address him by his professional title, and even Jack addresses him as "Doctor" during, so to speak, business hours. Diana Villiers, Stephen's great love throughout most of the series, most frequently calls him "Maturin" before their marriage (and even occasionally after), and Stephen reciprocates by calling her "Villiers". In fact, Jack, Jack's wife Sophie, Diana, are the only people who are entitled, by the intimacy of their relationship, to address Stephen by his first name. (It should be emphasized that Last-Name Basis does not imply coldness or distance in the relationship; for instance, Tom Pullings, who has been a close friend of Stephen's ever since their first commission together in the Sophie, invariably addresses him as "Doctor". Stephen, however, does customarily address Pullings as "Tom" in informal conversation. Stephen and Diana, during their long courtship, are another obvious example.)
 * Jack's very old shipmates, especially those who follow him from commission to commission - his "followers" - invariably address him as "Captain" out of their deep respect for him, no matter how close their relationship is. Jack will customarily address old friends/subordinates such as Pullings, James Mowett, William Babbington (and later on in the series, William Reade) by their first name in informal conversation; when naval business is being done, he will call them "Mr. (insert surname here)" or address them by rank.
 * Last-Name Basis saves Stephen's fortune on at least one occasion:
 * The Laws and Customs of War
 * There are numerous scenes, usually in passing, where Jack will read the Articles of War to the crew in lieu of a sermon on Sunday.
 * The emphasis with which Jack reads these regulations, with their hair-curling repetition of "shall be punished by death", varies according to his mood and the situation on board ship. When all is well, he'll skim through the Articles so as to let the men get on with the important business of having their Sunday dinner; but when he's angry about something (as at the beginning of The Truelove), he'll read the Articles in a most impressively menacing fashion.
 * Also discussed repeatedly in contexts such as when, early on in the series, Stephen quizzes one of the officers about the custom of showing "false flags" to trick a potential enemy. The officer explains that this practice is quite legal as tactical deception in pre-battle maneuvering, but that the ship's genuine national colors are always raised before battle is joined. This is quite important because if it's not done, the ship can legally be treated as a pirate vessel!
 * It causes a few problems sometimes: one character, Dutourd, in The Wine-Dark Sea takes it as an absolute affront that his possessions and money are claimed after it's been legally established that no, he had no letter of marque or anything similar - the closest thing he could produce was a well-wishing letter from the French Minister of Marine - and was thus being treated as a pirate, saying that he was robbed. He goes on to cause trouble for Stephen later.
 * To be more precise, Dutourd's personal possessions and money were left alone (no doubt, of course, they would have been seized by the crews of privateers less well-disciplined than the Surprise's man-of-war's men); it was the expedition's treasury that was confiscated and then shared out among the crew. Also, his situation was more anomalous than the previous paragraph might imply. He himself didn't have the requisite letter of marque, but his American sailing-master, who was killed in the action in which the Surprise captured the Franklin, did, so Jack decided to stretch a point. As things turned out, that might not have been the wisest thing to do.
 * Lie Back and Think of England: Sophie may have been brought up to follow this trope, despite Jack's best efforts to encourage her to enjoy their marital relations. While Jack loves Sophie deeply, he's less than totally satisfied with Sophie's passive attitude toward sex (which is undoubtedly a factor in his extramarital adventures). During The Yellow Admiral, when their marriage is experiencing serious difficulties, Diana and Clarissa Oakes do their best to coax Sophie out of her indifference about sexual relations, with some success.
 * It does not help that Jack's idea of foreplay is getting drunk at dinner and he approaches sex with the same briskly aggressive attitude he otherwise reserves for boarding actions in combat.
 * Like Brother and Sister: Stephen and Sophie have this dynamic.
 * Limited Advancement Opportunities: Often averted since promotion is a plot point in nearly every book, and provides the title for five of the novels, but by the end of the series O'Brian had to go to increasingly absurd lengths to keep that much seniority in a small frigate like the HMS Surprise.
 * Living Legend: Captain Jack Aubrey, globe-trotting badass much caressed by the Admiralty, astronomer and geometer, member of the Royal Society. Stephen Maturin, world renowned naturalist, physician, and the James Bond of the Napoleonic Wars also much caressed by the Admiralty. Beloved by all of Britain, feared by her enemies, these two are highly improbable.
 * Local Reference: Patrick O'Brian's Irish ancestry and his move to a Catalan town in his youth both show up in the character of Stephen Maturin.
 * Loving a Shadow: Stephen himself is afraid that his own feelings toward Diana were false after he runs into her again in Boston, and discovers that he no longer loves her, leading to endless self-questioning if his earlier passion were based on reality. Even their marriage was acknowledged by both as an act of convenience, in order to regain Diana's lost British citizenship so that she couldn't be deported to America. Despite their close friendship, it isn't until The Letter of Marque when it is finally established, without a doubt, that Diana and Stephen truly love each other.
 * The Longitude Problem: Shows up occasionally, as would be expected in a book with its setting, usually when the ship's chronometers run into problems.
 * Long Running Book Series
 * Lost at Sea: A not-uncommon trope throughout the series.
 * Married At Sea: Stephen and Diana at the end of The Surgeon's Mate, possibly also Jack and Sophie at the end of The Mauritius Command (though in-text it's implied that Sophie prefers a proper church wedding ashore.) Stephen had wanted to marry Diana aboard the H.M.S. Shannon in The Fortune of War, and the captain was preparing to do it (he even had the proper passages marked in the Book of Common Prayer) when he was interrupted by the ship-to-ship duel with the U.S.S. Chesapeake.
 * The Catholic Church didn't recognize the (civil, Anglican) ceremony as canonical, though, so Stephen and Diana were, by Catholic standards, "living in sin" until they got "properly" married in a Noodle Incident between The Letter of Marque and The Thirteen Gun Salute.
 * MD Envy: Few naval surgeons are actual physicians, and even fewer are as learned and skilled as Dr. Maturin.
 * Minored in Asskicking: Has Stephen Maturin ever lost a duel? Justified in that dueling skill is described as nearly mandatory for survival at Maturin's Irish university, where Duels Decide Everything. On one unfortunate occasion, he did kill a man that he had intended to only wound lightly, due to the fact that his hands, badly damaged from torture, couldn't aim the pistol with the degree of accuracy required. There was also the slight problem that Maturin's opponent had already planted a pistol ball in his chest, a 'misfire' that would have gotten him killed by officiant in any case.
 * Mixed Metaphor: Jack uses these all the time, as well as Incredibly Lame Puns. Stephen likes to poke fun.

"Stephen: If any man so far forgot himself as to make a licentious suggestion to Sophie, she would not understand him for a week, and then she would instantly lay him dead with [Jack's] double-barreled fowling piece."
 * An extensive list of these and other such "Aubreyisms" can be found here.
 * Motor Mouth: Stephen has been known to go on and on about exotic birds. He knows this and uses it deliberately; while he's babbling on about the feathers of an albatross no one would expect him to be a spy.
 * The Movie: "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World." Based mostly on the tenth book, but it includes elements and lines from much of the series.
 * Mugging the Monster: an unlucky footpad jumps a pensive Jack Aubrey in Post Captain, only to get the stuffing beaten out of him. In hindsight, it turned out to be the right move: Aubrey, afraid that he'd killed the man, took him home for Stephen to treat. The poor guy turns out to be completely incompetent at robbery, but makes an adequate assistant for Stephen (though still terrified of Aubrey).
 * Must Have Caffeine:
 * Mention is made of hands resorting to soaking burnt bread or roasting and brewing barley when they're out of coffee as a poor replacement. Killick also improves in his coffee-brewing throughout the series.
 * This is especially applicable to Jack and Stephen; there are several funny scenes where the duo tries to secure coffee from other ships where it turns out that the captain either doesn't like coffee or objects to it on medical or religious grounds.
 * Nautical Folklore: All over the place, particularly among the foremast hands, but Maturin is often dismayed by how much of it Aubrey seems to take seriously.
 * Noodle Incident: Several passing references are made in various books to cruises and missions undertaken by Jack and Stephen (mainly in the Surprise). Much of what happens on shore between books, or while the main characters are at sea, falls into the same category.
 * Nostalgia Filter: A number of older captains and admirals (and, increasingly, Jack and Stephen) remember the past quite fondly. A number of references are made to the 80s and 90s. The seventeen-eighties and -nineties. One spends a significant amount of time at dinner instructin a midshipman on proper behavior, specially pointing out with approval Jack's rather old-fashioned behavior and appearance
 * Out-of-Genre Experience: The books are Napoleonic-era historical novels, but chapters here and there turn into a espionage drama.
 * Or period romance fit to compete with the likes of Pride and Prejudice.
 * Pet the Dog: Harte, Aubrey's hated admiral, shows a moment or two of decency in Treason's Harbor, mentioning that it is his habit to try to buy the liberty of Algerine slaves whenever possible.
 * Perpetual Poverty: Jack's seamanship and amazing fortunes at sea earns him huge amounts of money from captured prizes. His equally amazing misfortunes on land often mean that at the start of every new book, his fortune is either lost or is in danger of being lost, with him hunting for a source of revenue that would clear his debts.
 * Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Midshipman (later lieutenant, later captain) Babbington. It's implied that his love of the ladies gave him the pox so often it stunted his growth. In fact, he never grew into the clothes his mother sent him to sea with in the first book and he's always been small. He also kicks a great deal of ass, following the illustrious footsteps of Lucky Jack.
 * Pirate: Encountered occasionally, always as Type 1. Mostly in the less developed parts of the world, and sailing smaller craft, though Aubrey does engage Alastor, a French four-masted pirate ship, in The Wine-Dark Sea.
 * Mention also goes to the Chinese and Malay members of the Lively's crew, who were mostly "recruited" from empty junks and praus. Their skills come in handy in HMS Surprise, when Jack leads a boarding-party of them to take a gunboat. Instead of charging in with cheers, European-style, the former pirates take out their targets with garrotes and knives in total silence, leaving Jack and the European sailors stunned.
 * Plucky Middie: lots and lots of them. Pullings, Babbington, and Mowett form the first generation of Jack's midshipmen, risen to commanders and post-captains themselves. Reade and Hanson belong to the "second generation"; by the end of the book series, Reade is a lieutenant in charge of the tender Ringle, while Hanson is on track for promotion to Lieutenant.
 * Potty Emergency: normally, arrival at a secret prison run by one of the dreaded intelligence agencies is an imposing affair, which makes things all the funnier in The Surgeon's Mate when--as a result of having eaten some rather dubious crayfish--Jack, Jagiello, and their captor, the Consummate Professional Duhamel, all make a mad dash through the prison in search of a restroom upon arrival. (Stephen had medicated himself, so he's the one whom the astonished prison officers turn to for an explanation.)
 * Privateer: Encountered often. Jack even becomes a privateer captain himself at one point.
 * Proper Lady: Sophie, contrasted with her Spirited Young Lady cousin Diana. Although she's quite spirited herself at times.


 * Put on a Ship: Reverend Martin, Dr. Maturin's frequent companion on naturalist expeditions, is sent home to England for medical reasons.
 * Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: despite the huge, huge list of crowning moments of awesome that Aubrey pulls off as a captain, the one that comes up most often in-universe is his first: Sophie versus Cacafuego.
 * Renaissance Man : Natural philosophers of the age embraced this trope, but Badass Bookworm Dr. Maturin especially does so. See the Cultured Warrior entry above.
 * Jack Aubrey, astronomer/telescope builder/mathematician/Member of Parliament/musician, also fits well with this trope.
 * Rule of Funny : There's no real reason a keenly observant, organized mind like Maturin's should be so completely inept at remembering basic nautical facts, especially ones explained to him repeatedly.
 * Perhaps more that he is utterly uninterested in the subject, but it's still pretty hilarious.
 * Actually, he takes pride in his "not inconsiderable maritime knowledge," often using nautical expressions on land. At one point Jack has to reassure him when he's feeling a little low about this (the phrase "Thou wilt never shit a seaman's turd" is mentioned). Rule of Funny in full force.
 * Running Gag: Stephen Maturin's signature ability to fall out of any boat or ship. Eventually he gets better at this, but by that time it's too late: due to his reputation for such he is usually assisted aboard, much to his indignation. (On the other hand the officers have learned to cope; for a while it was standard practice to have a jar of oil ready--just in case Stephen's pocketwatch gets a dunking when he's trying to board, and needs to be cleaned of water.)
 * Conversely, the sailors are usually much more used to small craft than they are to horse-drawn carriages. Several minor incidents ensue.
 * Young Midshipman Babbington's obsession with prostitutes. On one visit to Plymouth, Aubrey had to empty his pockets beforehand as the only way of keeping him "passably chaste"; on other occasions he's usually the first to the sickbay after shore leave due to VD, and in his later appearances his growth appears to have been permanently stunted due to pox. (Not that it stops him from being quite the lieutenant.)
 * Secret Weapon:
 * Polychrest was originally designed to carry one -- a large rocket delivery system.
 * The French were convinced that Worcester carried one due to its amazing technicolor muzzle flashes, and ran like hell after the first broadside. Turned out to be the surplus firework gunpowder that Jack had brought for gunnery practice.
 * Servile Snarker: Killick. Well, less "snarking", more "shrewish nagging." Jack and Stephen put up with him all the same.
 * Shown Their Work: Is absolutely littered with historical details about the workings of a British navy ship.
 * Except for the one time O'Brian Did Not Do the Research- Book 6 (The Fortune of War), with the aforementioned Frenchies running around a Boston where they wouldn't be welcome (because, in the War of 1812, Boston, and New England in general, was the center of anti-war feeling and pro-British, or more accurately, pro-free-trade-with-Britain, sentiment). Another character makes a horse-driven round trip from Boston to Salem in a mere two hours.
 * Also the aforementioned problem of the "marthambles", though in that case it was more a question of O'Brian not going deep enough into the contemporary materials.
 * Shut UP, Hannibal: when Stephen finally has enough of Mrs. Williams' badgering of Jack Aubrey and his family, he coldly informs her that unless she stops he would inform the authorities about her illegal gambling racket. It's just one of his many Awesome Moments.
 * Slashed Throat: How Stephen deals with a French intelligence agent during a particularly harrowing day. When he coolly relates the fact to a fellow in British Naval intelligence, the other is quietly shocked and terrified.
 * Slut Shaming: In keeping with the tone of the era, sex is dirty and shameful and everyone does it, but only women are punished for it. Men may be called "the very merest rakes", and it might hinder promotion prospects, but they're not poverty-stricken outcasts for it.
 * Smart People Know Latin: Maturin will often use Latin around patients both to keep them from knowing what he is saying (when he is talking to another physician or an assistant who also speaks Latin) and because patients are reassured by the fact that their doctor is learned enough to speak Latin. The crews of the ships he serves on often brag that their ship has a real physician that speaks Latin and Greek.
 * Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Even accounting for the Frozen in Time aspect of the series, the child characters age more rapidly than one would expect. General Aubrey's last-born son (and Jack's half-brother) gets the full SORAS treatment, apparently being a teenager by the end of the series, though the other children in the series seem to still be in their pre-teen years.
 * Spirited Young Lady: Diana is an extreme example, contrasted with her Proper Lady cousin Sophie.
 * Spot of Tea: Subverted. Aubrey and Maturin are inveterate coffee drinkers, and Maturin once refers to tea as "that insipid wash."
 * Spy Drama (very much Stale Beer-or should we say Stale Grog-Flavored)
 * Interestingly, with a few exceptions such as his activities in Boston Maturin's spy work is often basically paperwork. Deadly, deadly paperwork. We hear repeated references to his allowing particular pieces of information to be 'captured' which lead to the deaths of numerous enemy agents and, in one case, the collapse of a French intelligence department. Maturin with a prepared notebook is a dangerous thing.
 * Stout Strength: Captain Jack Aubrey himself. He weighs about 18 stone (~250 pounds), and Dr. Maturin often frets about his weight and tries to get him to eat less. But he's still fit enough to lead his crew into hand-to-hand battles and scramble up the ship's ropes like an ape. If you have ever tried to climb up a sailing ship's rigging, you will grasp that he is, even by modern standards, quite physically fit.
 * Jack is quite tall (his exact height isn't recorded, but is probably at least 6 feet, in a period where most men were under that; Napoleon is always depicted as being short but was probably actually of average or slightly less-than-average height for the time). His 18 stone probably doesn't hang on him in such an unseemly manner as might be supposed by modern readers.
 * Russel Crowe had to put on some weight for the movie, but he's not portly. "The Captain has an uncommon genteel figgar"
 * In Treason's Harbour, Jack narrowly loses a race in the ship's rigging to a sixty-something admiral. (Actually, it's strongly implied Jack intentionally slows himself on the way down so that he loses by a hair.)
 * Sugar and Ice Personality: Stephen.
 * Sweetie Graffiti: Jack carving his name into the Surprise.
 * Those Two Guys: Mowett and Rowan, two hands from the gunroom who endlessly compete in poetry afloat and drinking ashore.
 * Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Stephen is short (one source gives his height as 5'6"), dark, variously described as "scrawny" or "squat", pale, sloppily dressed (he has an unfortunate habit of smearing ink or grease on such nice items of clothing as he is able to obtain), his only remarkable feature being his pale eyes. Nonetheless, after many trials, he's able to win the hand of the dazzling beauty Diana Villiers.
 * Jack is big, strongly built (and rather stout, though probably not obese by modern standards), ruddy, blond, with twinkling blue eyes, and absolutely covered with scars from numerous battles, including a mostly-missing right ear. He's a good deal better-looking than his friend Stephen, but he's no Adonis either. His wife is the lovely blonde English Rose Sophie Williams.
 * Once pointed out by a female prisoner, who happens to see him swimming naked. Maturin replies 'Perhaps he is a bit cut about. But you will notice that his scars are all received honorably from the front, except those that are from the rear."
 * Unreliable Narrator
 * Early on the aphorism "Today's wardroom joint is tomorrow's messdeck stew" is introduced. Meaning that anything officers discuss today will be hazily retold by the crew tomorrow.
 * Usually O'Brien gives both reliable and unreliable versions of events to contrast them, but occasionally only the crew's version will be told, leaving the reader guessing as to what actually happened.
 * In The Commodore, Preserved Killick, Jack's steward, tells Barret Bonden, the Captain's coxswain, about domestic unrest in the Aubrey household. This is in fact something of an aversion of the trope, as Killick, who has served under the Captain since the beginning of the series, is as well-acquainted as anyone else alive with what makes his master tick; and he's talking to another very old shipmate and friend, Bonden, who knows Jack just as well as Killick does.
 * Jack himself is an unreliable narrator to his wife, deliberately describing naval actions as loud, exciting, and generally bloodless as opposed to the harrowing and gruesome events they are. A classic example is describing a boarding action, in which impressed former pirates take an enemy vessel and systematically kill everyone on board, then calmly loot the bodies while the decks run with blood, with a 'we carried the day'.
 * Where the Hell Is Springfield?: O'Brian uses a number of fictitious places in the course of the series, with varying degrees of geographical specificity. The semi-piratical English West Country port of Shelmerston and the fictional Polynesian island of Moahu are two particularly noteworthy examples.
 * Wooden Ships and Iron Men: A particularly pure version of this trope.
 * Worthy Opponent: Many, many examples throughout the series, from Master and Commander onwards. Jack, for instance, is in the habit of having a defeated enemy captain keep his sword (which the vanquished is traditionally supposed to give to the victor as token of surrender) if his antagonist has fought with particular gallantry.
 * Jack and his officers will sometimes correct others if those people make slighting remarks about the opposition; for instance, in H.M.S. Surprise, a passenger aboard the Surprise speculates that the French must be acting in a cowardly fashion during a certain sea battle. Jack (or one of his officers) quickly demurs, praising the French for their gallantry and pointing out that the French commander is actually waiting to gain a tactical advantage.
 * In The Nutmeg of Consolation, Jack is displeased when Stephen tells him that he's arranged to have the gunpowder resupply of a French frigate (which Jack very much desires to engage and, if possible, capture) cut off. This is because Jack feels that it wouldn't be a fair fight to take on a ship that can't shoot back.
 * In The Surgeon's Mate, the American commander Lawrence of the U.S.S. Chesapeake, mortally wounded in battle with the H.M.S. Shannon at the end of The Fortune of War, is buried in Halifax with full military honors, the funeral being attended by every senior British naval officer on hand including Jack (who is still recovering from serious wounds sustained in the capture of H.M.S. Java by the Chesapeake in the previous book).
 * And as for The Fortune of War, the climactic ship-to-ship battle between the Shannon and Chesapeake is organized in a punctiliously formal way that shows beyond a doubt that both captains regard each other as Worthy Opponents.
 * Throughout the entire series, there are many, many incidents which show a strong feeling of professional kinship among the men who sail the seas and serve their respective countries in their navies. This is closely related to The Laws and Customs of War (see entry above); there is a strong sense of what is "done" and "not done" in naval warfare and an equally strong code of honor and respect between professional naval officers, which becomes a plot point on more than a few occasions.
 * Yank the Dog's Chain: If everything's going well by the end of one book, expect it to have changed by the start of the next.
 * You Don't Want to Catch This: Maturin uses the plague this way in the first book.
 * Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: alluded to in The Letter of Marque, after Jack is framed for stock fraud. Mrs. Williams doesn't think for a moment that he's innocent, but she thoroughly approves of what she thinks he did (i.e., defraud the stock market of potentially thousands of pounds).