An Extraordinary Saga Reaches Its Final Port
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
On the face of it, what is surprising is not that Patrick O’Brian was able to write a 20-novel epic of combat and naval camaraderie set in Nelson’s day, but that others had not done so. Great Britain’s war with France, which from time to time included war with Spain, Denmark, and the United States, provides an author with a 23-year canvas on which to paint stirring scenes from the great age of sail. The Royal Navy at that time had a thousand ships – “storm-tossed ships” as Alfred Thayer Mahon famously described them – multiply those ships by 23 years and there is more than enough material to keep a novelist from having to overdraw on his imagination.
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