Captain Jack Aubrey has been dismissed from the Royal Navy after a conviction for rigging the Stock Market--a crime of which he was innocent. He is set up as master of a private man-of-war by his newly rich friend, Maturin, a Naval physician who also serves the Admiralty as a secret agent, but the loyalty of comrades cannot alleviate the gloom caused by his removal from the Captains' List. An engagement with an enemy national ship of equal force might...

As Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are on their way home to report their latest victory to the government, they are menaced by those out to capture Maturin for his actions against the French intelligence network in the New World.

Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, but the ensuing peace becomes ugly for Captain Jack Aubrey, with violent celebrations of the English sailors in Gibraltar and the desertion of nearly half his crew. To cap it all off, the Surprise is nearly sunk one night in a shattering collision on the first leg of her journey to South America, where Jack and his friend Stephen Maturin are to help Chile assert her independence from Spain.

The delay

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"Shipwrecked on a remote island in the Dutch East Indies, Captain Aubrey, surgeon and secret intelligence agent Stephen Maturin, and the crew of the Diane fashion a schooner from the wreck. A vicious attack by Malay pirates is repulsed, but the makeshift vessel burns, and they are truly marooned. Their escape from this predicament is one that only the whimsy and ingenuity of Patrick O'Brian-or Stephen Maturin-could devise. In command now of a new...

Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater brings the frigate Patrician to the Pearl River on the China coast and finds himself caught up in bizarre events.

1818: Captain Adam Bolitho is sent to North Africa in command of the frigate Onward. The war with France has ended at last, and Onward sails on a diplomatic mission with the French frigate Nautilus. Then the Nautilus becomes a sacrificial offering on the altar of Empire, and the hunt is on for a treacherous foe. Can the brotherhood of the sea transcend old hatreds and an ocean of blood?

In February, 1806, the frigate carrying Vice Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho drops anchor off the shores of southern Africa. Bolitho's instructions are to assist in hastening the campaign in Africa, where an expeditionary force is attempting to recapture Cape Town from the Dutch.

April 1803. The Peace of Amiens is breaking down. Napoleon is building ships and amassing an army just across the Channel. Horatio Hornblower-who, at age twenty-seven, has already distinguished himself as one of the most daring and resourceful officers in the Royal Navy-commands the three-masted Hotspur on a dangerous reconnaissance mission that evolves, as war breaks out, into a series of spectacular confrontations. All the while, the introspective...

As commander-in-chief of His Majesty's ships and vessels in the West Indies, Admiral Hornblower faces pirates, revolutionaries, and a blistering hurricane in the chaotic aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars.