“NO MAN COULD EASILY surpass me in ignorance of naval terms,” claims Stephen Maturin early on in Master and Commander, Patrick O’Brian’s first Aubrey-Maturin novel. Indeed, Maturin’s continuing ignorance of the ways of the sea and nautical terminology is one of the chief sources of humor in the series—and a very clever one, for it allows us, in our own ignorance of 18th-century naval cant, to associate ourselves with the novels’ paragon of intelligence.
“ ‘So that is a mainstay,’ said Stephen, looking at it vaguely. ‘I have often heard them mentioned. A stout-looking rope, indeed.’ ” Likewise confronted, we can imagine ourselves uttering these lines with Maturin’s boggled look and feigned disinterest. Later, in Post Captain, Maturin wistfully concludes, “ ‘Your mariner is an honest fellow, none better; but he is sadly given to jargon.’ ”
When reading the Aubrey-Maturin novels, the question “How much vocabulary do I really need to know?” inevitably arises, and it recurs again and again. If you’re anything like me—a certified lubber—you raced through the first three novels glued to the plots, inventing definitions, or what you convinced yourself were at least reasonable approximations, and reassuring yourself at each instance of Maturin’s touching lubberliness.
The fact is you don’t have to know more about the historical and nautical background to enjoy these books. But there comes a time when most of us suddenly realize we want to know more. Cross-catharpings? Lord Keith? Mauritius? Part of the great beauty of these tales is that they spark a thirst for knowledge; suddenly an era that initially seemed very remote—that of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars—becomes very immediate. I found myself wanting to know more almost every time I turned the page. What I needed were maps and nautical manuals, instructive illustrations, and historical essays. There definitely was no one good source.
What I found when I began researching this companion book, however, was a great wealth of resources right here in the United States. Both the Mariners Museum in Newport News, Virginia, and the New York Yacht Club in New York City, for instance, were able to provide me with editions of Falconer’s Universal Dictionary of the Marine and The Naval Chronicles, the very volumes that O’Brian so studiously pores over in writing his books.
Even more important to the success of this venture was that two eminent American scholars of the period—John Hattendorf, Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island, and Worth Estes, Professor of Pharmacology at Boston University—agreed to contribute essays and review the text. Hattendorf’s “The Royal Navy During the War of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic War” and Estes’s “Stephen Maturin and Naval Medicine in the Age of Sail” are invaluable to anyone who wishes to better understand the Aubrey-Maturin era.
Of course, understanding the full meaning of every term O’Brian uses would take the better part of a career. And this is not necessary to enjoy the books. But even a humble attempt to learn more enhances the reading experience. It brings us closer to the author’s passion both for the age of Admiral Lord Nelson and for the very act of exploring that time. When you open this book, I hope that your imagination calls up the smell of the musty volumes of The Naval Chronicles, the feel of their rough-trimmed pages and of the thin layers of rice paper that for two centuries have attempted, often successfully, to keep the ink of the wonderful engravings in place.
The excitement of peeling back time and existing in the past, a thrill that O’Brian has so obviously reveled in for decades, can be experienced by better grasping the primary tools with which that past was preserved: words, many now out of use, with connotations fast fading. And when a sailor admonishes Maturin and Martin to “mind the paintwork.... They would not like to have the barky mistaken for a Newcastle collier,” it’s gratifying, if not essential, to know that a “barky” was sailor slang for a vessel well liked by her crew and that a “collier” was a bluff-bowed and broad-sterned ship originally intended to carry coal.
A few things must be said about this companion book. First, no claim can be made of comprehensiveness. Our survey of O’Brian’s books found more than 8,000 words that could use defining for modern readers, including the names of some 400 ships, 500 people, and 1,200 places. Obviously we had to focus our efforts, and we chose nautical, medical, and natural history terms, though we didn’t limit ourselves to those.
Second, we have tried to use as little jargon as possible in describing the terms. But we haven’t sidestepped it entirely. You will quickly pick up the basic terminology that recurs in the definitions of the more specialized words. In that way, the learning of sailing terminology grows exponentially. You build with each new term, and before you know it, it all crystallizes. You have ascended through the morass of rigging to the maintop, and as you look down, the ship becomes a coherent organic entity. At that point the vocabulary becomes manageable. The act of, say, “hauling in the cable and fishing the best bower at the starboard cathead” is easily recognizable as pulling in the anchor and hanging it on the bow, indeed, a specific anchor on a specific part of the bow.
Third, O’Brian uses a variety of spellings and hyphenations for many words, so it pays to be a little flexible when searching for a term in A Sea of Words. Also, a word that appears in many forms in the books probably does not appear in all of those forms here. For instance, we define “spanker” and “boom” but leave it to the reader to resolve “spanker-boom” (the boom of the spanker). Also, when O’Brian himself provides an explanation for a term in the text, we usually do not redefine it, simply to save precious space for the many other terms.
Finally, there is more than one way to use this book. Looking up words as you go is rewarding, but browsing through the lexicon to familiarize yourself with the lingo in between book readings is perhaps even better. Part of the beauty of O’Brian’s books is the deft way in which he weaves the languages of the sea and science into the narrative. Stopping to consult a reference book too frequently disturbs the intimacy between reader and tale, and between reader and author.
By all means, do read the two introductory essays before you read the next O’Brian novel. You may be surprised at how many more of O’Brian’s details you pick up when you return to the fiction.
As for the sea salt, there’s this little cottage on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, just over a dune from the crashing surf. On the porch is a graying two-seater hammock swing where my wife, Jessica, and I have been known to hoist volumes of O’Brian. Pelicans soar overhead in age-old vees and the weather raises Cain whenever it wants to. And yes, the sun and the sea salt wrinkle the pages of our paperbacks. I hope you put this book to good use in a similar reading spot.