As Patrick O'Brian
readily confesses, he modeled many of the events of the novel
Master and Commander on the remarkable Mediterranean cruise of Lord
Cochrane (later, tenth earl of Dundona ld) aboard the
Speedy, a dwarfish brig that Cochrane once called ``little
more than a burlesque on a vessel of war." Consider Cochrane's account of
his assignment to the Speedy : ``The vessel originally intended for
me by Lord Keith w as the Bonne Citoyenne, a fine corvette of
eighteen guns, but the brother of his lordship's secretary happening at
the time to arrive from Gibraltar... that functionary managed to place his
brother in one of the finest sloops in the service, leaving to me the
least efficient craft on the station." The similarity of this true event
to the circumstances surrounding Aubrey's appointment to the Sophie
in Master and Commander is no mistake.
Like the Speedy, the Sophie must return a pair of
12-pounders to the ordnance wharf because her timbers cannot bear the
concussion, and she too can carry only ten tons of water. Both brigs ship
the fore-topgallant yard of the Gèn&e grave;reaux as a main
yard and plane the yardarms to fool port officials. And like the
Speedy, the pint-size Sophie, a mouse among elephants,
begins her cruise at Port Mahon, on the island of Minorca, and goes on to
wreak havoc in the western Mediterranean.
In 1800 Port Mahon is a town bustling with war. It is a place where men
and women of varied backgrounds and allegiances have been thrust together.
The stamp of England, nonetheless, has been firmly imprinted on the port,
since the British have occupied Minorca throughout much of the eighteenth
century. In fact, the hotel where Aubrey stays was built in 1750, when the
British controlled the island, and is named after The Crown, an inn in
Portsmouth.
It is in Port Mahon that Aubrey and Maturin meet. Their mutual love of
music brings them together and, despite their very different natures, they
do have more than a little in common: both are broke, both are out of
work, and both are in need of an opportunity. It comes on April 1, 1800,
when Aubrey is made captain of the Sophie and then induces Maturin
to ship as his surgeon.
At first assigned the lowly duty of convoying merchant ships, the
Sophie sails east from Minorca along the 39th parallel with a dozen
merchant ships to Cagliari, a fortified seaport on the southern coast of
Sardinia. From Cagliari she escorts another convoy of merchant ships north
to Leghorn (Livorno), a major Tuscan seaport, which is neutral and open to
ships of all nations. In the Genoa roads, Aubrey gets his break when Lord
Keith, Admiral of the Blue and commander in chief in the Mediterranean,
orders the Sophie to cruise the French and Spanish coasts down to
Cape Nao to menace their commercial ports and vessels. In short order
Aubrey, like Cochrane, takes full advantage of this command and makes his
overachieving ship an infamous nuisance to the enemy.
Spanish merchants convince their government to send the 32-gun
xebec-frigate Cacafuego after Aubrey. But he, like Cochrane, fools
the bigger ship by pretending to be a Danish brig with a plague-ridden
crew. In both instances the deception is so successful that the smaller
ship might have seized the opportunity to attack her predator, but in both
the captain refuses to take this perhaps morally unfair advantage, raising
eyebrows as to his courage among his less conscientious crew.
Following a return to Port Mahon and an errand to Sir Sydney Smith's
squadron off Alexandria, Egypt, the Sophie sails back to Minorca
and then is allowed another cruise. She sails to Barcelona, Spain, once
again playing cat and mouse with the merch ant vessels on the busy Spanish
coast, even brazenly taunting the gunboats protecting the Barcelona
harbor. Early one morning the Sophie sails past the mouth of the
Llobregat River, which flows southeast from the Pyrenees Mountains and
enters the sea three miles south of Barcelona, when she again meets the
Cacafuego.
Following an all-too-brief refit in Port Mahon, the Sophie is
ordered away again, this time for Malta, to be refitted more fully, and
then, regrettably, to Gibraltar with the mail. In his anger at having the
Sophie's cruise cut short and for other abuses from Admiral Harte
at Port Mahon, Aubrey gives this assignment a rather liberal
interpretation. A nighttime shore attack against three Spanish coasting
vessels off the coast of Spain results in an encounter with a formidable
French squadron - including the ships Formidable,
Indomptable, Desaix, and Muiron - under Rear Admiral
Linois.
At the conclusion of Master and Commander, Aubrey witnesses two great
battles from different sides of Bay Algeciras. In the first - when an
English squadron under the nonfictional Admiral James Saumarez sails into
the bay and attacks the French squadron and batteries - Aubrey views the
encounter from a somewhat disadvantageous point of view on the west side
of the bay - that is to say, in Algeciras. With Maturin, Aubrey watches
the second action, which occurs in the Strait of Gibraltar, from the
eastern side of the bay, high atop the Rock of Gibraltar.
Algeciras Bay
Also called the Bay of Gibraltar, a body of water at the eastern end of the
Strait of Gibraltar that separates the Spanish-controlled seaport of
Algeciras from the British-held Gibraltar by just six miles.
Gibraltar
A peninsula on the southern coast of Spain at the
western end of the Mediterranean Sea, notable for its strategic rocky
promontory, fourteen hundred feet high. Encompassing only about two and a
quarter square miles, Gibraltar is, nonetheless, an ideal loc ation for
controlling the Strait of Gibraltar, the passage between the Mediterranean
and the Atlantic Ocean. Still, the occupation of Gibraltar was a costly
prospect both financially and in terms of relations with Spain. As Vice
Admiral Sir George Collier once declared in the House of Commons: ``I have
long looked upon Gibraltar as a military millstone about the neck of this
country.... Sir, I suppose, if the many millions Gibraltar has cost Great
Britain since it has been in our possession were to be changed into
silver, it would go near to encrustate the whole rock" (The Naval
Chronicle, Fall 1814, p. 400). During the Napoleonic wars, some
favored relinquishing control of Gibraltar and maintaining a similar
strategic presence by annexing Ceuta on the Barbary Coast.
Captured by Britain and her allies in 1704 during the War of the Spanish
Succession, Gibraltar was made a British colony by the Treaty of Utrecht
in 1713. During the American Revolution, it was continually under siege
from the French and the Spanish.
Minorca
One of the Balearic Islands, in the western Mediterranean off the coast of
Spain. The Balearics - comprising the four main islands of Ibiza, Majorca,
Minorca, and Formentera, and numerous smaller islands - are actually
partially submerged peaks that are a continuation of the mountains of
southeastern Spain.
For the English, Minorca offers some of the comforts of home but better
weather. ``In rough weather the spray of the sea is driven over the whole
island," reports the fall edition of the 1799 Naval Chronicle. ``The
air...is much more clear and pure than in Britain" (p. 125). A low-lying
island, Minorca's rough, uneven topography is rilled by deep, narrow
valleys, known locally as barancoes, that emanate from the island's
interior and stretch down to the sea.
The same edition of The Naval Chronicle sketches the island's
complicated history:
Minorca first fell under the power of the Romans, afterwards of the
northern Barbarians; from them it was taken by the Arabs, who were subdued
by the king of Majorca, who surrendered it to the King of Spain. The
English subdued it in 1708, under General Stanhope; it came under the
government of the French in June 1756; was restored to this country by the
treaty of Paris in 1763; surrendered to the Duc de Crillon, Commander in
Chief of the combined armies of France and Spain, on the 5th of February
1782; and again came into the possession of the English on the 15th of
November 1798, when attacked by the squadron under Commodore Duckworth,
with troops commanded by the Honourable General Charles Stuart. (p. 125)
The Spanish regained Minorca in 1802 by the Treaty of Amiens, but the
British continued to use the island during the Napoleonic wars.
Port Mahon
The chief town and port of Minorca, located on the island's southeastern
coast. Port Mahon is not only strategically located (225 miles south of
Toulon, 100 miles southeast of Barcelona, and 150 miles north of the main
sea route between Gibraltar and Naples), but it also has one of the finest
natural harbors in the Mediterranean. Indeed, a popular old saying
proclaims, ``The Mediterranean has three good harbors: June, July, and
Port Mahon." The harbor's entrance was guarded by the powerful fortress of
St. Philip. The town sits at the back of the harbor, some three miles from
the fort.
Strait of Gibraltar (the Gut)
The passage between Spain and Africa that connects the Mediterranean Sea
to the Atlantic Ocean. At the western end of the 36-mile strait, Cape
Trafalgar stands to the north and Spartel to the south. At the eastern
end, Gibraltar stands to the north and Ceuta to the south. The strait is
about eight miles wide at its narrowest point and 23 miles wide at its
widest. The two promontories at the eastern end of the strait, the Rock of
Gibraltar and the Jebel Musa at Ceuta, form the mythical Pillars of
Hercules.
