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I'm sorry to interrupt fun quote time but I just finished The Thirteen Gun Salute, and did Stephen just spend the entire book practicing with a sharpshooter's rifle only to ice Wray and Ledward offscreen? And then dissected them to get rid of the bodies HOLY gently caress, STEPHEN I was so happy for him with his orangutan and rhinoceros, and then he goes and does this ice-cold superpro poo poo e: Slightly more on topic, it is always super funny and shocking to me when one of the foremast hands or Killick uses the word "loving" in a sentence. Because of how sparingly O'Brian does it, every f-bomb feels like a declaration of war. Phy fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Dec 21, 2017 |
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Dec 21, 2017 17:13
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Lockback posted:I finished that book a week or so back and that was basically my exact reaction. Thinking about it a little more, I now choose to believe Stephen's so good at what he does that he did it when even O'Brian wasn't looking.
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Dec 25, 2017 22:39
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Started reading Clarissa Oakes on Sunday after a few months' break, and because I will forever associate it with beating to quarters and distant sails threatening to slip down under the horizon, I listened to that Boccherini quintet for the first few paragraphs while O'Brian caught me up on horrible Sydney and the horrible platypus and potential cases of importunate pricks.
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Nov 21, 2018 01:25
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Have now finished The Wine-Dark Sea, and what a delightful installment. From Stephen cursing about slavers with rare but eloquent vehemence, to a goddamned seamount, Jack's great good fortune in hunting (his maiming aside, of course - those are starting to add up), to the Chilean mission collapsing thanks to that democratical scrub Du Turd, and Stephen's naturalizing is always a joy. And then in the last few pages there's the trip around Cape Horn, and USS Motherfucking Constitution, or one of her sisters, looming out of the mist, and Jack escaping her by piloting Surprise around an iceberg like Will Smith at the end of Independence Day. I had to put the book down a couple times to go into the kitchen and scream silently into my knuckles so I didn't have to explain to my wife why I was making such horrified faces at a book about English boat men. And how wonderful that Jack's nickname for Heneage Dundas is "Old Hen". (I think my favorite Swearing Stephen bit is still "Boiled poo poo.")
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Feb 7, 2019 09:14
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Lawdog69 posted:Yeah I also think it’s too bad O’Brien didn’t spend a little more ink on the battles in the later books because he can write one hell of a sea battle when he wants to. The Waakzaamheid chase and battle stands out in my mind as one of the best “fight scenes” I’ve ever read and O’Brien apparently invented that one whole cloth so it’s not like he couldn’t cook up an interesting blow by blow on his own initiative. Jack's elation turning to horror as the ship broaches to and disappears into the wave gives me goosebumps every time I think about it. My god. Oh, my god. Six hundred men.
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Jul 12, 2019 18:08
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I was in Baltimore recently and managed to do an early-morning scout through the U.S. S. Constellation and took a bunch of photos. They might be of interest to those in this thread: Wonderful, thank you for this! PhantomOfTheCopier posted:I know that they ran crack frigates and painted and polished, but I can't look at those pictures without laughing and thinking how much dirt and grime and sea water and lamp smoke and fumes and run-on sentences and darkness would exist in Jack's day. Load those decks with supplies and tools and sheeting, grating, coils of rope, and things would start to look a lot less inviting. I suspect that's the big reason for the aggressive cleaning/scrubbing/polishing at all times (even in the modern navy) - get at all behind and the barky rapidly turns into a festering stinkhole, and unsafe in a fight to boot. So I'm now two thirds of the way through The Commodore and very impressed by Jack's about-face on the subject of slavery - from noncommittal but in general agreement with his cherished Nelson that it is in some way necessary for the survival of the Navy, to, when he sees the typical conditions endured on a captured slave ship, lashing the slavers to the masts of their vessel and methodically blasting it to smithereens in Freetown harbour for all to watch. Way to loving go, Jack. Phy fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Aug 11, 2019 |
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Aug 11, 2019 01:43
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I would probably have a mental break stuck that close to so many people. They would throw me over with Hollum, unless they put me on the Stately or something.
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I reread the passage and it mentions several people having seen that, though with O'Brian's characteristic opacity it certainly could just be rumor running through the crowd.
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Aug 11, 2019 07:15
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Not only is that an atrocious joke but that's Jon Bois, author of Tim Tebow's CFL Chronicles and 17776. I once spent an entire morning laughing about something in Tebow, and if you haven't read the latter, go do that now please. Not kidding. I just finished The Yellow Admiral and I still think Jack's most endearing quality is his habit of laughing a bit too long at his own jokes. And it's a real joy seeing Stephen and Diana actually getting along for once. (Yes, I know what's coming, sadly.) How can there only be two more books?
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Sep 14, 2019 09:42
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Well, I finally finished Blue At The Mizzen today, nearly five years on from when I first dove into Master and Commander on my honeymoon. Part of me spent the book looking for signs that O'Brian was in some way losing his touch. I think I have my sadness over Terry Pratchett's last few books to thank for that, but thankfully this was just as much of an Aubrey-Maturin as any of them. There were moments that surprised me, to be certain - Horatio Hanson feels like, for want of better words, a backdoor pilot for a new series, and then there's Jack's homesickness at Sophie's letter, or his reference to some element of rigging that sounded to Stephen like a vulgarity even worse than the usual naval standard, that I couldn't parse at all. But there's the usual delightful turns of phrase ("pistols for two, and coffee for one"), old friends like Joe Plaice and Awkward Davies and a reference to Stephen's boiled-poo poo rocks, and the book ends about as well as one might hope - on a high note, with Surprise racing off at the summons of the Admiralty, for another adventure that, at long last, we're not privileged to see. I'm going to read these again sometime. It may take a while, but I'll be back.
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Sep 21, 2020 09:16
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Just read this in the OSHA thread in GBS, and what in the goddamn?Platystemon posted:It’s probably like ships and was the most direct mechanical arrangement and now it’s hung on through inertia. I never had A Sea Of Words when I was reading through, and this seems like exactly the sort of thing that would have to be explained to Stephen - did it come up and I just don't remember it?
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Jan 9, 2021 01:52
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:Aside from being too pretty and too tall to be Maturin, Paul Bettany is perfect. Yeah I've been watching Wandavision and seeing Bettany tower over the rest of the cast had me scrambling for google. They cast a 6'4" dude as short, dark, plain Stephen Maturin E: I still liked him in the role though I saw the movie long before I ever read any of the books, and Russell Crowe and Killick really stuck for me for what those characters look like. Phy fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Feb 23, 2021 |
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Feb 23, 2021 20:38
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Arglebargle III posted:The film is more about 19th century Dudes Rocking than any particular political perspective. The conflict is remote enough in history that most people probably don't have an opinion on Napoleon or his politics. It doesn't shy away from presenting the poor living conditions in the royal navy although it does downplay the brutal discipline. I mean it does have Nagle being flogged for disrespecting Hollom But then Jack in the books always did prefer not to use the whip when possible*, contrasted with a number of references to other, less happy ships. So if the brutality of corporal punishment in the British navy gets downplayed, that's on O'Brian for writing his protagonist as less abusive than many of his colleagues. And I don't suppose I can blame him for that *Of course, he does flog sometimes, but without remembering specifics it always seemed like it was in circumstances where he would be seen as shockingly lax by his colleagues and the admiralty to not flog.
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Jul 9, 2021 19:20
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But then you don't get those hails of "Eeengleesh whaelaor!"
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Jul 16, 2021 16:54
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MeatwadIsGod posted:the movie As far as I'm concerned that little Boccherini ditty at the end is the theme song for the books. By the end of my first read of the series I would play it on my phone as I cracked into the first few pages of the next book. Also, I've started into season 1 of The Terror and it definitely had me missing Jack and Stephen. I wonder what Jack would have made of screw-driven ships... Do I correctly remember him being rather skeptical of an early steam launch?
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Sep 24, 2021 18:05
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Is it by Hyperion Dan Simmons, or Rise of Endymion Dan Simmons? (Imma read it either way, I had to request an interlibrary loan since it's only in our system as an audiobook and I still prefer paper) The captains and mates being in uniform much of the time while icelocked in the Arctic strikes me as a little odd, but maybe that's me being used to Jack - I remember him dressing for the weather more often than not unless circumstances demanded, like Sundays or visiting captains. E: or maybe it's just tv shorthand for "remember, these guys are the captains"
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Oct 1, 2021 17:51
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builds character posted:Jack is miss piggy. Blonde, stout, enthusiastic about violence It's perfect
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Jan 5, 2022 01:04
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Laudanum Stephen Cocaine Stephen  Sober Stephen  Stephen stepping off the boat at Pulo Prabang after practicing with a rifle for the entire sailing 
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Jan 6, 2022 20:23
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Phy posted:I'm going to read these again sometime. It may take a while, but I'll be back. Well, that didn't take very long. A little longer than it feels like, though.
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Feb 10, 2022 00:56
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Pages from the end of Master and Commander and I'm looking up the battle of Algeciras, and from there Lord Cochrane, and drat, this book really is Cochrane, isn't it? If I'm reading this right there's even an engagement or two that Cochrane has, but Jack misses, due to getting pulled away from his cruises. (Like, seriously, right down to when Cochrane was boarding Cacafuego's counterpart, the ship's surgeon really was the only man left aboard Speedy)
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Feb 24, 2022 06:31
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Arglebargle III posted:Aaaah this had never occurred to me until now but they have to use expensive copper structural bolts because iron bolts in the hull would be corroded by the electrical connection with the sea through the ship's copper sheathing. I wondered why they used copper pins in the keel that incentivized the dockyard stealing it like with the Polychrest or the Worcester. They can't use iron in anything that might touch the copper sheathing! Galvanic corrosion is certainly a thing that shipbuilders of the time recognized: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_corrosion#Royal_Navy_and_HMS_Alarm) But copper nails were a tradition of boatbuilding anyway, I'm pretty sure because copper corrosion is vastly friendlier than how iron rusts. Water doesn't affect copper much. Oxygen (including dissolved oxygen in water) causes a layer to form that drastically slows down any further corrosion. Rust just keeps loving going. "Rust never sleeps." Phy fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Feb 27, 2022 |
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Feb 27, 2022 07:46
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Crossposting from the Lego thread in DIYPhy posted:This fellow built HMS Diana, a fifth rate frigate constructed in the late 18th century, using all Lego parts including thread for the rigging Diana was a 38 gun to Surprise's... 24? 28? The exact count in the books escapes me right now, and whether her historical complement of carronades is included in that. Anyway Diana's bigger. But, they were both launched in 1794 within a couple months of eachother! Phy fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Mar 31, 2022 |
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Mar 31, 2022 04:05
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Prolonged Panorama posted:If you haven't seen them, the youtube series following the rebuild/restoration of the 1910 wooden sailing yacht Tally Ho is excellent at getting across various wooden ship construction techniques, and their rationales. The work is ongoing (they just poured a new lead ballast keel!) and the videos are super detailed and engaging. And as someone who works mostly with computers it's really satisfying to watch all that manual labor add up to something increasingly tangible. Obviously it isn't 1:1 with 19th century warships, but it gives you an idea of how complex even a relatively small boat is to build, and they're sticking as close to the original plans and using traditional materials and techniques as much as possible. I'll definitely go in to my next read through with much clearer pictures in my head, especially when Jack is consulting with Chips. I started watching this a couple weeks ago and I'm up to the point they're casting the knees, and yeah it makes some of the construction terminology a whole lot clearer. Also just the amount of work that goes in, and the training necessary to oversee building a ship. It's fascinating seeing an organically developed technology, and I'm not necessarily talking about the wood itself so much as that these are methods that arose through trial and error over centuries to cope with, and harness the good qualities of, wood. My brain is trained to think in terms of line production and standardized parts, but the nature of the materials available means that's not really possible here. You're going to have to cut and fair each frame individually anyway, so why not make them all different down the length of the hull to maximize the desired hydrodynamic character of the ship? Oh but also you have to angle the cuts in all three dimensions in a way that is not easy to communicate on paper, and also also you have to shave a little extra off in spots to make sure there's no little dips or bulges in the line, because it's just loving wood, why not? But now every frame is different so every floor or knee is individually built or cast too, and... It's unfamiliar and exciting, and my god, if this is what it takes to put together a smallish single-masted yacht, imagine the work that went into a frigate, let alone a ship of the line! Kind of depressing there's basically one guy with an OSHA.jpg operation in the States doing live oak, but then I guess there's not a ton of call for it any more.
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Apr 21, 2022 19:50
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builds character posted:And I thought Dundas but that one is a little shakier in my recollection. (Time for a reread?) The real Heneage Dundas died at the age of 56, having never married, and he'd been ashore for a good while by that point. E: not that marriage necessarily equals happiness, of course.
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Aug 12, 2022 18:44
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Don't know how I didn't pick up on this the last time through, but rereading Post Captain last month and when he's describing Polychrest's atrocious sailing qualities, it occurred to me that "leeway" literally means the allowance for how far to the lee the wind will push your ship off course Etymology is fun for me, so it's always neat to discover the meaning of a word has been staring me in the face for the last half hour going "Hello! McFly??"
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Dec 22, 2022 19:19
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A Proper Uppercut posted:My first introduction to Austen was Pride and Prejudice came downloaded for free on one of the first Kindles I got. Randomly decided to read it and loved it. Yeah Austen is public domain, if anyone's interested. I read Pride and Prejudice last year and it deserves the hype.
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Jan 20, 2023 18:36
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screaden posted:I wish I had a better understanding of the ship terminology and whatnot to fully understand how crappy the Polychrest was supposed to be I'm not nautical aside from a summer where I took sailing lessons two decades ago, but I think I understand some of it. The hull plan for HMS Dart, one of the inspirations for Polychrest (HMS Arrow that Arglebargle mentions was its sister ship)  And for HMS Project, the other inspiration, this being a small, shallow-drafted ship designed to mount a type of howitzer  Both double-ended (ie, both ends shaped like the front of a boat, with Project being worse - it has a loving rudder at both ends), and both with sliding keels like a personal sailboat's centerboard. In Post Captain, Polychrest was built like this so that the Main Cannon firing would recoil the whole ship back in the water instead of breaking things. Compare to the historical Surprise:  You can see in Surprise's plan, from the bottom view, how much more squared-off it was at the back. So one problem Jack had with Polychrest, despite his best efforts at getting the utmost performance out of a ship, is that it missed stays all the time. I'm guessing this is because the double-ended design meant Polychrest got shoved backwards whenever it tried to tack, though Dart and Arrow's captains seem to have been able to solve that issue. (Navigation 101 spoilered below in case you already know what that means.) When you're sailing upwind, you can't sail directly into the wind, otherwise you'll just get pushed back. You have to point off at an angle. Now, you probably can't stay at the same heading your entire trip, so at some point you have to turn to the opposite angle on the other side of the wind, and your course ends up looking like a big zigzag. When you make this turn across the wind, while pointing into the wind, that's called tacking. The critical point of the whole operation is when the front of the ship points directly into the wind, because if the wind brings your ship to a halt, there's no water moving over the rudder to keep it turning and complete the tack. This is called missing stays. You miss stays, you're dead in the water, and it's a big production to get going again. If you can't tack, you have to "wear", which is doing a big 270° turn in the opposite direction. It works every time but it takes more time, more room, and eats up your hard-won upwind progress, so you'd really prefer not to have to. The other big problem Jack had was that Polychrest had a huge leeway, which as I mentioned in a post above, literally meant how far off course to leeward (away from the wind) the ship gets blown by a wind hitting it from the side. If I had to guess, I'd say its removable keels didn't provide enough surface area along enough of the length of the ship to resist getting shoved off course.
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Jan 26, 2023 00:24
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Prolonged Panorama posted:Nice 3D breakdown of Victory: Definitely have to watch that when I'm back on WiFi I just finished my second read of The Mauritius Campaign, and, goddamnit Clonfert. Admiral Bertie giving Jack the task of reporting the Mauritius victory in London after scooping the material victory out from under him was a nice touch that I'd completely forgotten, though. Fe: huh, the capital of Rodrigues Island is Port Mathurin, founded in 1735. I wonder that it never came up.
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Mar 13, 2023 18:32
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The Lord Bude posted:Give him time. And bonus points if he also gets a matching tat on the front so it looks like the cannonball ploughed right through him. You know those biomechanical tattoos where it looks like machinery is bursting out through your skin? That but a hammered-out shilling on your scalp
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Apr 3, 2023 21:56
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Arglebargle III posted:Desolation Island is a favorite of mine I'm right in the middle of it for the second time. Love Sophie convincing both boys to take the other one to sea ASAP for their mental/physical/fiduciary health
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Apr 4, 2023 16:41
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Desolation Island: Stephen's assistant Martin catching typhus and dying threw me for a bit of a loop It's a different Martin, which is probably why O'Brian didn't say anything about him being a country parson
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Apr 11, 2023 20:01
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uPen posted:Don’t worry, everything is going to bee ok in the end. Yeah you just gotta try and bear with it
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Sep 20, 2023 02:46
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Kylaer posted:Because it's Boston I've read similar about Deadwood, and a quick doublecheck reveals that they were talking specifically about cowboys in the American West. Sailors, especially on a multicultural crew like the Royal Navy employed/pressganged, wouldn't necessarily have that same religious background. The earliest use of the phrase "I don't give a gently caress" dates to 1790!
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Oct 18, 2023 18:56
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Psion posted:ok I'm curious now, where's this from specifically? From the Wikipedia article on "gently caress": gently caress posted:A 1790 poem by St. George Tucker has a father upset with his bookish son say "I'd not give [a gently caress] for all you've read". Originally printed as "I'd not give ------ for all you've read", scholars agree that the words a gently caress were removed, making the poem the first recorded instance of the now-common phrase I don't give a gently caress.
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Oct 23, 2023 19:35
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TIL Lord Cochrane held the first patent for an airlock, and was an early fan of steamships. (IIRC Jack viewed the steam launch he encountered with some small amount of scorn, though I'd imagine he could be persuaded of their utility around a dreaded lee shore.)
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Jan 12, 2024 22:24
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A Real Horse posted:Also when Dr Maturin first wakes up after dining with Aubrey and thinks to himself “Christ, another day.” I have never related to a fictional character so hard in my life. Oh god, I just got a flash of Roast Beef and Ray as Stephen and Jack
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Mar 12, 2024 03:43
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PlushCow posted:This gets linked here every so often and is a nice thing to read after finishing the series https://www.tor.com/2011/02/28/forever-bailing-patrick-obrians-last-unfinished-novel-and-the-end-of-the-aubrey-matrurin-series/ So I went looking for this, and it seems like Tor nuked the entire post chain. Backups are available at https://michaelcross.me.uk/jowalton/, and look for Patrick O'Brian in the authors tabs.
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Mar 18, 2024 22:13
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The Lord Bude posted:I want a crossover novel where the Surprise gets caught up in a temporal anomaly and gets sent to the future where they all get picked up by the enterprise. Jack is briefly set a-lee when he learns the captain with the authoritative manner and aristocratic voice is named Jean-Luc Picard E: One of those long, loving, TMP-style model panning shots. Jack, Stephen, and Barret Bonden are crowded around the porthole of the shuttle, marveling at the testament to man's ingenuity picked out against the inky blackness of the eternal deeps. House-high letters on on the hull begins to come into view: E SE ISE RISE PRISE Forgetting himself, Bonden elbows Captain Aubrey with a look of transported joy! Could it be? RPRISE Could it be?! And the mood instantly changes as the rest of the word is revealed: ERPRISE TERPRISE ... USS ENTERPRISE A sour taste fills the back of the sailors' mouths. The future belongs to Americans. Phy fucked around with this message at 06:48 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 02:54
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Not one of my strengths, unfortunately.
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May 1, 2024 16:58
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