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Originally Posted by tugboat-2  Now that I found Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series,...I can't put 'em down. If you like sea stories and especially square rigged sailing ships of old, ...man this guy takes you to sea in a way that sucks you right in!! |
I got about half way through the Aubrey-Maturin books and stopped buying them. Still want to finish the series but I just not had the time/inclination to finish. As I read the books I thought there was no way much of what is in the stories could really happen. It was just too far fetched.
Then I read a book on the Royal Navy during that time frame!
Apparently what O'Brian did was read the history of the time and ship log books to weave his stories. Most or all of the battles in the books are based on real actions. O' Brian might change some time frames and people around to fit his story but the major points in the battles seem to be true.
One of the criticism's about the books and the movie was that they are repetitive. Which I think is true. But I suspect for many of the men in the Navy the predictability of the lifestyle was an attraction. Or a curse.
As a tid bit. There was a Royal Navy ship of this period that was sent to the Pacific and was gone for something like 15 years. Nobody thought the ship would make it home. Well it did return and the crew thought they were rich! They were owned years worth of back pay!
Problem was that the people in the Admiralty had stolen the money.
The book is The Sea Warriors by Richard Woodman. Who want to have fun with the name.....
If you read The Sea Warriors you can see the story lines in the O'Brian series as well as the people mentioned in the books. Aubrey is a mixture of some of the men of the time.
C. S. Forrester's Horneblower books are also good. I read all of them years ago. For those books you have the a movie with Gregory Peck. And there was a series on A&E a few years ago that was really good at following the Horneblower books. The A&E movies are really good.
Over the last year or so I have read some books on the development of the ships of the line. Not sure if I picked up this tid bit from one of those books or from Woodman's book. The Royal Navy built, launched, and commissioned a new ship. I think it was a frigate. There had been complaints from the Captain and others about the construction of the ship but she was put into service. She was lost on one of her first voyages in the North Sea.
Apparently the shipbuilders used shortened pieces of copper/bronze "nails", forgot which. The fasteners were supposed to have been something like 15-24 inches long but they used much smaller pieces that made it looked that the ship was build correctly. The shorter pieces were used so they could sell the expensive metal. It was suspected that the ship just fell apart in a storm.
Stealing from the King was a constant problem in ship building and the Admiralty. The Kings of GB had their metal thieves and we have expensive toilet seats.
See how the worm turns.
Later,
Dan
Re: Do yall read (Books) 
50 years behind the times
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