I understand that Aubrey assumes that the French captain is dead, but surely a large number of english sailors and soldiers are aboard the aceron, and most of the French are dead, therefore, how could the French captain stage a take over, with ‘Tom’ captaining a well defended ship?
It’s a pretty old thread, and been longer since I’ve seen the movie or read the books, but it would have been a prize crew on the Aceron, so it’s possible that the French captain could have retaken the ship…in theory at least. They would have probably had to parole at least some of the French crew to really man the ship, and they wouldn’t have wanted to draw down to heavily from the Surprise, as it was still a warship that was expected to be at fighting trim. IIRC, prize crews were simply expected to get the prize back to English waters, where the crown/RN would have the option of buying the ship into service (thus giving the capturing crew a nice fat reward) and perhaps giving the provisional captain a ship of his own.
-XT
Once you start, twenty books goes by pretty fast. When I read them for the first time, I would leave work at lunch to go sit in the bookstore parking lot to finish a book and then after buying the book, start reading it on the parking lot before going back to work. Nothing annoyed me more than finishing one of them at midnight before the bookstore opened. This was, obviously, in the pre-iPad era.
So would the new captain ‘Tom’ have been on the Aceron, and therefore captured by the old French captain?
Tom Pu;llings was in command of the prize crew.
The movie is mashed up from several books.
The plot of chasing a ship around the horn and into the Pacific is from The Far Side of the World but the ship itself is an amalgamation of several spectacular ship battles from the books, including the Cacafuego, from Master and Commander, and the Waakzaamheid from Desolation Island.
The chase around the horn, though exciting, doesn’t match the pitch of the scene in Desolation Island that it is taken from. That is one of the best battles in the entire series – and the series is loaded with fantastic battles.
Stephen operating on himself is from HMS Surprise, as has been mentioned earlier. In the book, he kills a man in a duel but he also takes a bullet.
The midshipman who loses an arm is William Reede, and I believe he loses it in a battle against Dyak pirates in The Nutmeg of Consolation.
As far as I can recall, the shenanigans that the French captain tries to pull with pretending to be the ship’s surgeon doesn’t occur in any of the books.
The movie is very good, but it doesn’t even scratch the surface of how great the books are.
Just realized that this is the most zombish (zomboid?) thread I’ve ever posted in. So it goes.
But part of it grows back. 
I hear you. I’ve read the series 8 times now and it was common practice for me to start carrying around the next book with me once I got through 3/4 of the current book.
Sadly, they haven’t made the books into digital editions yet so it may be a bit before I go for a 9th go-through…
It is rumored that you can download them from news groups.
My sister prefers Hornblower, I prefer Jack Aubrey. Hornblower is too angsty for my taste.
Russell Crowe, as Aubrey, was exactly the image I had from reading the books. I’ve never seen a fictional character matched so well on screen.
Except he’s not large enough. In anything later than the very earliest books, Aubrey is a very large (ie rather overweight) man. Crowe is far too fit.
Yeah, Horatio would take on the French fleet with a rowboat, seaman Brown and a sharp stick. Aubrey would run like hell. Guess who I want driving my boat?
O’Brien said he thought of Charlton Heston. I’d pick Rutger Hauer.
Of if we were doing this 40 years ago, Van Heflin. I don’t know Heflin’s height, but the face would work.
I liked Crowe, love the movie, have watched it four or five times. It never gets old. I’m glad they stayed at sea and didn’t mess around with the romance. Although when reading the books, I was glad for the respite of the time ashore.
ETA: I’ve watched a few of the old seafaring movies, and they really suffer in comparison.
If you read the descriptions of him in the books however, I think you should pick maybe Gerard Depardieu.
During the Napoleonic wars, were there exchanges of prisoners? You certainly had them in the American Civil War, at least until the Union started to recruit Blacks, the Confederacy refused to recognize them as soldiers but as escaped slaves and horrors like Andersonville and the Fort Pillow massacre resulted. i thinking the French captain was planning on trying an uprisng and iof that failed, he could be more easily exchanged (the English would ask for less for a sawbones instead of a captain).
I don’t know about prize ships being overtaken by the prisoners but certainly there is the famous case of the Amistad by African slaves several decades later. Apparently one reason is that the Amistad didn’t have the facilities to keep the slaves chained properly. I doubt if any warship really had facilities to lock up a couple hundred men. You can keep them in the squad bays (barracks) but are those really secure from escapes? And as others have said, you can’t spare that many men to man it. Warships have a certain amount of men needed to run it 24/7 and you are probably shorthanded to began with after combat losses, diseases, accidents, etc.
I’m four books into the Aubrey–Maturin series. Does it get any better?
Actually I’ve read four of the books but not the first four: The Surgeon’s Mate, The Ionian Mission, Treason’s Harbour, and The Letter of Marque. I bought them all at once at a used book store. I’m not planning on buying any more. I really liked the movie and have read plenty of nonfiction about sailing warships but for some reason these books just didn’t click with me.
For recapture of a prize ship, the only example I can find isn’t a very good one. The Seringapatam was a British whaler captured in 1813 during the famous Pacific cruise of the USS Essex. It was crewed mostly by former British whalers who had joined the U.S. Navy and the following year it mutinied and escaped to Australia under a British flag. But given the spectacular number of whalers the Essex had taken I don’t know if any of those men had been aboard when the she was first captured.
Prisoners were routinely exchanged during the Napoleonic wars.
Unfortunately you haven’t given the series a chance to really shine. They may well not be suited to you, but to get the most out of them you have to see the slow development of the relationship between Aubrey and Maturin, and Aubrey’s career, and the revealing of Maturin’s true character, and Aubrey’s home life and so on. Just jumping into the middle isn’t going to do it.
He’s fat right from M&C:
“You portly men of a sanguine complexion often die suddenly, from unconsidered exertion in the heat. Apoplexy - congestion.”
I wish, I wish you would not say things like that, Doctor," said Jack, in a low tone; they all looked at Stephen with some reproach and Jack added, “Besides, I am not portly.”
“The captain has an uncommon genteel figgar,” said Mr. Marshall.
You’re just not taking this seriously, are you?
The books were released in digital editions back in December. They’re $9-$10 each on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
I saw the movie first, and later O’Brian couldn’t convince me that Stephen is small and ill-favored, because he looks like Paul Bettany in my head.
I believe a scruffy Dustin Hoffman would have been excellent.