The Unknown Shore

by Patrick O`brian (Author)

• Used

  Large Print
  1996

  $4.16

  Patrick O'Brian's first novel about the sea, The Golden Ocean, took inspiration from Commodore George Anson's fateful circumnavigation of the globe in 1740. In The Unknown Shore, O'Brian returns to this rich source and mines it brilliantly for another, quite different tale of exploration and adventure. The Wager was parted from Anson's squadron in the fierce storms off Cape Horn and struggled alone up the coast of Chile until she was driven against the rocks and sank. The survivors were soon involved in trouble of every kind. A surplus of rum, a disappearing stock of food, and a hard, detested captain soon drove them into drunkenness, mutiny, and bloodshed. After many months of privation, a handful of men made their way northward under the guidance of a band of Indians, at last finding safety in Valparaiso. This saga of survival is the background to the adventures of two young men aboard the Wager: midshipman Jack Byron and his friend Tobias Barrow, an alarmingly naive surgeon's mate. Patrick O'Brian's many devoted readers will take particular interest in this story, as Jack and Toby form a kind of blueprint for Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, the famed heroes of the great Aubrey/Maturin series to come.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1997

  $5.78

• New

  Paperback
  1998

  $11.55

  The second book Patrick O'Brian wrote about the sea and a brilliant sequel to The Golden Ocean. As in The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore tells the tale of another ill-fated ship on Anson's expedition round the world -- the Wager. Parted from her squadron in the fearful storms off Cape Horn, the Wager struggles on alone up the ironbound coast of Chile, before she is driven onto rocks and sinks. The survivors include Jack Byron, a midshipman, and his eccentric protege Toby, an alarmingly naive surgeon's mate with a single-minded devotion to zoology. Faced with a surplus of rum, a disappearing stock of food, and a hard, detested captain, the survivors soon descend into trouble of every kind, including drunkeness, mutiny and bloodshed. As they make their way northwards under the guidance of a band of stony and depraved Indians, they at last find safety and good treatment in Valparaiso. Admirers of O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels will see in Jack Byron a matter-of-fact, bluff precursor to the great Jack Aubrey. Whilst Toby, raging in Greek against a corrupt Member of Parliament, stripped by thieves in the Farthing Pie House, asking the Commodore to carry his snake, arousing the darkest suspicions in the Chilean Inquisition, is an amiable companion whose vagaries afford endless diversion on a hard and dramatic journey.