★★★★★ | Nautical Fiction | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
The week after Connor passed, I could not distract myself with reading. But, I desperately needed the distraction, so I turned to the healing salve of Aubrey and Maturin. I picked up where I left off with Treason’s Harbour, which is either my third or fourth time through these books. Transporting myself to another known world outside my suffering and despair seemed to help.
As with most of these books, the story line seemed only vaguely familiar, despite multiple readings. Why is that? I believe I read O’Brian in such a comfortable state, letting the words roll over me, that I don’t pay too close attention to the plot.
Notable scenes/story lines:
- Jack being mistaken for Laura Fielding’s lover based on how her huge dog Ponto loves him (Jack saves the dog from drowning early in the story).
- The sailors crossing the desert in fear of spirits and genies.
- Jack’s sadness at the looming salvage of his dear Surprise.
- Stephen’s use of light to see Wray’s pupils dilate while playing cards.
- The lone sea battle where Admiral Harte’s ship of the line blows up and Jack uses his knowledge of Zambra Bay to encourage a French frigate to run aground on to the Brothers rocks.
- “this brief parenthesis” (Location 532). The mission was meant to be a short affair before heading to the North American station. Standing alone, it’s a chilling summary of life itself.
Highlights
A hopeful journey was better than the arrival, that nothing could come up to expectation, and that there was a great deal to be said for old ways, old friends, and one’s old ship. (Location 569)
‘There is a restless itch to be busy, a tedious obsessive hurry: waste not a minute, they cry, as though the only right employment for time were rushing forwards, no matter where, so it be farther on.’ — Dr. Maturin’s lament of seafaring ways. (Location 1581)
The Captain was unusually quiet: not glum, but mum. He had a singularly poignant feeling of loss as he sat there at Mowett’s right. He missed Pullings extremely, and when he looked at the rows of faces that he knew so well, liked and esteemed – looked with the knowledge that this society would be broken up in the next few weeks – he had a strong sense of his life being upon the turn, between two seasons, as it were, with the certainties of the one no longer valid for the other. He was not a fanciful man, but for some time now he had had an indefinable sense of chaos following order, of impending disaster; and it oppressed his mind. (Location 4148)
He went ashore with the first boat of empty casks, and for the first time that morning he found himself in touch with that feeling of another and as it were parallel world again, the feeling that had been with him so strongly these last few days. It was the extraordinary familiarity of the watering-place that brought it back. He had not been there for nearly twenty very active years and yet he knew every stone of its ancient worn coping and even the exact scent of freshness and green as he leant over the basin. (Location 4576)