The Yellow Admiral

Aubrey-Maturin Series, Book 18

De: Patrick O'Brian

Narrado por: Ric Jerrom

Life ashore may once again be the undoing of Jack Aubrey in The Yellow Admiral, Patrick O'Brian's best-selling novel and eighteenth volume in the Aubrey/Maturin series.

Aubrey, now a considerable though impoverished landowner, has dimmed his prospects at the admiralty by his erratic voting as a member of Parliament; he is feuding with his neighbor, a man with strong navy connections who wants to enclose the common land between their estates; he is on even worse terms with his wife, Sophie, whose mother has ferreted out a most damaging trove of old personal letters. Even Jack's exploits at sea turn sour: in the storm waters off Brest he captures a French privateer laden with gold and ivory, but this at the expense of missing a signal and deserting his post. Worst of all, in the spring of 1814, peace breaks out, and this feeds into Jack's private fears for his career.

Fortunately Jack is not left to his own devices. Stephen Maturin returns from a mission in France with the news that the Chileans, to secure their independence, require a navy, and the service of English officers. Jack is savoring this apparent reprieve for his career as well as Sophie's forgiveness,when he receives an urgent dispatch ordering him to Gibraltar: Napoleon has escaped from Elba.

©1996 Patrick O'Brian (P)2015 Audible, Ltd

Legal, Financial, Marital, Naval, Admiral Problems

At the start of The Yellow Admiral (1996)—the eighteenth novel in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series—it’s 1814, and, as ever, Captain Jack Aubrey is in dire financial and legal straits on land. Instead of enriching him with prize money, the slave ships he captured and the slaves he rescued in the previous novel have brought him a salvo of legal writs for “wrongful confiscation.” Jack and his wife Sophie are going to have to sell her beloved Ashgrove Cottage, and his own family estate Holcomb has been entailed. Furthermore, if the war against Napoleon is won soon (which must be about to happen), the possibility of winning more prize ships will vanish.

Jack’s bosom buddy Stephen Maturin (surgeon, naturalist, and spy) temporarily can’t access his own big fortune (frozen by Spanish authorities) and has a full crew of dependents, including his wife Diana, their daughter Brigit (now a spunky little girl after having seemed to have been closed in on herself), Clarissa Oakes (a woman who was transported for shooting off a villain’s head), and Padeen (a surgeon’s assistant who was transported for committing theft when in thrall to opium), but he’s in good shape, as his friend Sir Joseph Blaine (Director of Naval Intelligence) has gotten pardons for Stephen, Clarissa, and Padeen.

The first half of this novel is much concerned with the desire of the wealthy British gentry to “enclose” free-use “common” lands so they can own and develop them, much to Jack's disgust. His favorite commons from boyhood have already been enclosed, with the last remaining open one being targeted by an unpleasant wealthy and well-connected neighbor. Typically, the aristos divide up a commons in parcels for themselves, expel all the commoners (who’ve been living on it for generations), then “improve” the land by cutting trees and draining marshes, all to make money by farming or grazing cattle. Will Jack be able to wield enough clout as “Lord of the Manor” of the commons in question to preserve it as a commons? The locals sure hope he will.

Complicating matters is the fact that the admiral in charge of the fleet blockading the French at Brest (where Jack must repair once his shore leave ends) is known as “the farmer Admiral” and is keen to have the commons in question being enclosed.

Interestingly, Jack finds democracy (one man, one vote) “pernicious,” because it leads to opportunists playing on the emotions of the mob, especially when running anything as large as a county or a country.

After Jack’s shore leave ends (after the first half of the novel, during which the only action is a graphic and suspenseful boxing match between Jack’s coxswain Bonden and the enclosing neighbor’s brutal gamemaster), Jack returns to the command of the seventy-four gun ship of the line Bellona and all six hundred men aboard her to participate in the British blockade of the French port. Unfortunately, the “farmer admiral” is furious with Jack’s opposition to the enclosing of the commons and so gives Bellona dirty difficult work to perform and writes negative reports on Jack’s captainship.

Indeed, the suspense of this novel chiefly derives from the title making the reader think that Jack’s fate is “Yellow.” Jack fears that the admiral’s hostility coupled with the lack of opportunities for another glorious success (like those he’s had in the past, giving him the name of “Lucky Jack Aubrey”) will end with him becoming a “Yellow Admiral,” who, lacking ships and men to command, becomes a pariah among his peers.

Sypathetic to Jack’s plight, Stephen has been working through his intelligence channels to get Jack a commission as admiral of the fledgeling Chilean navy until he can return to the British navy at a more promising time for promotion. Jack is interested but reluctant to leave the British naval promotion line.

At one point, Jack’s shore troubles afflict him at sea when he discovers that Sophie has discovered his old adulterous liaison with a woman in Canada and has decided that she’s done with him.

While marital problems, legal problems, financial problems, and promotion problems plague Jack, then, Stephen is relatively happy in this novel.

This being an Aubrey-Maturin novel, there will ultimately (for the patient reader) be a bit of exciting naval action between French and British ships, vividly and suspensefully (if briefly) described.

And there are plenty of the virtues of the other series books in this one:

Humor, as when Jack observes that the weather is “not fit for man or beast, as the centaur observed—hah hah hah” or as when one sailor describes an anti-climactic naval encounter with an enemy ship as “a genteel fart in a blind ally.”

Romance, as when Stephen compliments Diana, “You, my dear, are the delicate whip of the world.”

Vivid descriptions, as when one midshipman prepares too earnestly to join Jack and Stephen in playing some Mozart, “his hair pulled so tight, his face had a look of amazement.”

Interesting nautical details, as when we learn (painfully) what skylarking is.

And above all, the wonderfully warm and pleasurable relationship between Jack and Stephen, as in exchanges like this:

“Forgive me, Stephen,” he cried, “I am afraid I did not wait. Greed overcame me.”
“You say that almost every morning, brother; and I am afraid it is true,” said Stephen. “But I pray that you may yet be saved from gule, that most brutish and most unamiable of the seven deadly sins. But come, Jack”—looking at him attentively—“you are fresh-trimmed, neat as a bridegroom, almost handsome, in your fine coat and golden epaulettes. What's afoot?”

After this book, I just have two more to go before finishing the series, which I don’t want to happen!

Oh, and audiobook reader Ric Jerrom is perfect.

Stick with the Patrick Tull version

I had A very hard time listening to Mr. Jerrom’s narration after having listened to several read by Patrick Tull. Night and day.