 First edition cover | |
| Author | Patrick O'Brian |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Series | Aubrey-Maturin series |
| Genre | Historical novel |
| Published | 1981Collins (UK) |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (Hardback &Paperback) & Audio Book (Cassette,CD) |
| Pages | 368 first edition, hardback |
| ISBN | 0-00-222365-1 first edition, hardback |
| OCLC | 31728418 |
| Preceded by | The Surgeon's Mate |
| Followed by | Treason's Harbour |
The Ionian Mission is the eighthhistorical novel in theAubrey-Maturin series byPatrick O'Brian, first published in 1981. The story is set during theNapoleonic Wars.
The plot begins with the marriage of Dr Maturin and Diana Villiers. Soon after, Captain Aubrey takes HMSWorcester on blockade duty around Toulon, France, until the ship is sent for refitting. WithWorcester refitting, he is reassigned to HMSSurprise on which he, Maturin and Professor Graham seek a new ally among the pashas on the coast of theIonian Sea.
In reviews at the time of the 1991-92 reissue of this novel, one reviewer described Maturin's "hair-raising infiltration of the enemy coast" and then the mission of the title by Aubrey and Maturin, "to the Greek islands to tinker with the balance of power at the fringes of the Turkish empire", summing it up as "splendid adventures at a stately pace".[1] Another finds that time aboard the old shipWorcester has little excitement, while tension rises when "Aubrey is caught in a complex net of Turkish politics and rivalries", in which the fleet Admiral would be just as happy if Aubrey failed.[2]
Stephen Maturin and Diana Villiers have found domestic tranquility in their marriage. Though they share a new house in London onHalf Moon Street, Stephen's intelligence work demands privacy, so he settles in his rooms at The Grapes, where Diana comes often, and from which he walks to breakfast with her daily. Meanwhile, Jack Aubrey longs to get away from his ongoing lawsuit. Jack is given command of HMSWorcester for blockade duty off the French coast nearToulon. Jagiello brings the Maturins to port in his own carriage, which upsets, making Stephen's arrival rather last-minute.
While she is doing gunnery practice with gunpowder bought from a fireworks firm,Worcester encounters the French shipJemmapes.Worcester engages immediately, not having changed to ordinary gunpowder; the brightly colored flashes from her guns convince the enemy she is carrying some new weapon, andJemmapes sails away. Stephen is injured and returns to taking laudanum for the pain. Some of the crew practice an oratorio while the midshipmen practiceHamlet. Passengers are dropped off at Gibraltar and Port Mahon, including a Mr Graham, professor of moral philosophy, though the parson Nathaniel Martin is aboard long enough for Stephen to discover their shared interest in birds, before Martin joins HMSBerwick.Worcester joins the squadron off Toulon. Babbington, master and commander, joins the Mediterranean squadron as captain of theDryad. Babbington has fallen in love with Admiral Harte's daughter Fanny, but her father wants her to marry the wealthy Andrew Wray. Babbington figures that Wray and Harte have conspired to assign him to blockade duty. BeforeDryad, the Worcesters seeHMSSurprise arrive with mail for the fleet.
Admiral Thornton, commander of the blockade, is wasting away with the endless responsibilities of managing the complex political situation on the Mediterranean station. He has repeatedly refused reassignment, however, and Jack and Stephen suspect that engaging the French in a decisive fleet action may be his only hope of recovery. Thornton's second-in-command, Harte, has lesser goals. While Thornton is away, Harte passes instructions to Aubrey and Babbington regarding a mission to the neutral port of Medina on the north coast of Africa, with strict orders that they not upset the delicate political circumstances by engaging in any action that might be construed as aggressive, lest the local authorities find reason to side with the French.
Arriving off Medina,Dryad sees French ships already anchored in the port and rejoinsWorcester. Jack enters the neutral port in an attempt to draw French fire, but a tense, silent standoff ensues as the French similarly refuse to engage first, and Jack leaves without a shot having been fired. His crew is disappointed and he feels his reputation as a fighting captain is tarnished. Rejoining the fleet, Jack is reprimanded by Thornton and Harte for failing to capture Medina: it is revealed that Thornton had intended to deliberately allowDryad to be captured by the French in order to create a pretext upon which Aubrey could attack the port. Jack realizes that Harte, who has long disliked him, intentionally left this out of his orders in the hope that he and Babbington would botch the mission. Fortunately, he had the foresight to request Harte's orders in writing, so Thornton chalks it up to a miscommunication and returns Jack to the blockade.
Worcester then brings Maturin to the coast of France under the cover of night for a rendezvous with other agents. Shots suddenly ring out in the darkness, persuading Stephen to abandon the rendezvous. Waiting for the launch, he discovers Professor Graham, also working as a British agent, who has attempted his own rendezvous the same night and accidentally shot himself in the foot. Graham is rescued and handed over to the Captain of the Fleet to act as a Turkish advisor. Later, a storm blows the British ships off station and the French fleet slips the blockade. Admiral Thornton is pleased, but the winds change, preventing a successful engagement. The French admiral Emeriau declines battle and returns to Toulon. A few shots are exchanged, killing the captain and first lieutenant of HMSSurprise, and theWorcester, a poorly built ship, is strained beyond usefulness during the chase. Thornton tells Jack to take her to Malta to refit, then shift part of his crew to theSurprise for a mission to theSeven Islands on theIonian coast.
As they sail, a poetry contest is set up, with Mowett and Rowan splitting the prize. TheSurprise takes the blockade runnerBonhomme Richard, filled with spices, dyes, and heaps of silver. The silver is shared out at once, and Rowan takes the prize to Malta. Kutali, a (fictional) port in the Seven Islands, is disputed by three beys of the Ottoman Empire, each of whom rules semi-autonomously and plots against the others to further his own ambitions and curry favor with the Sultan. In exchange for British cannon, all three have offered to help the Royal Navy capture the neighboring city of Marga and possibly alsoCorfu, if not more of the islands, from the French. Jack's mission is to visit each of the three beys in turn, Ismail, Mustapha, and Sciahan, and offer British support to whichever one seems the most dependable ally.
Ismail and Mustapha prove duplicitous and temperamental, while Sciahan already in fact possesses Kutali and the loyalty of its Christian population and impresses Jack mightily. Though the strength of Kutali's fortifications has been greatly exaggerated, it is at least well suited to naval operations. When Jack sendsDryad to fetch the gun-laden transports and escort them back to Sciahan, Graham is furious and rebukes Jack for ignoring his counsel, which might have allowed them to negotiate better terms.Surprise lingers at Kutali, being windbound, and the transports seem long in coming. Rumour spreads that Ismail has been awarded control of Kutali by the Sultan himself, and the locals beg Aubrey to protect them. Graham travels by land toAli Pasha of Ioannina, where he learns the rumour is false: Ali Pasha, in his own double dealing, has spread the lie to provoke the short-tempered Mustapha against his enemy Ismail, hoping the Sultan will turn against the renegade Mustapha. The ruse has worked, and Mustapha has put to sea and captured the gun transports en route to Kutali.Surprise is ready to sail on the instant, as the winds have changed.
Jack quickly intercepts Mustapha's heavily armed ships,Torgud andKitabi, withSurprise firing broadsides instantly and repeatedly.Torgud is cruelly damaged, with many dead. Young Williamson loses half his arm.Kitabi attempts to manuever betweenSurprise andTorgud but crashes intoTorgud's side. Jack and his crew boardKitabi and take her, then proceed toTorgud, jumping across likeNelson. Tom Pullings falls in the melee, so Jack stands above him and fights fiercely in the close hand-to-hand combat. Jack finally reaches Mustapha, who was wounded early in the action. His aide Ulusan surrenders. Bonden carries the swords and ensigns. Aubrey asks Mowett what happened to Pullings and is happy to learn he survived. They return to theSurprise before theTorgud sinks.
See alsoRecurring characters in the Aubrey–Maturin series
On 5 and 6 July 1808 the 38-gun British frigateHMSSeahorse, Captain John Stewart, fought an action against the much larger Turkish frigateBadere Zaffer (of 52 guns), Captain Scanderli Kichuc Alli, and an accompanying Turkish corvette, theAlis Fezzan. After a long and bloody action the Turkish frigate surrendered when her obstinate captain was overpowered by his remaining officers. The damagedAlis Fezzan escaped during the night. Of particular relevance to the plot of the Ionian Mission is that the Turkish frigate was armed with brass 24-pounder long guns and two immense 42-pounders (the nearest British gun equivalent for the French 36-pounder - French pounds were heavier than British pounds).[3][4]
In the engagement with the two Turkish ships, Aubrey first boarded theKitabi, which surrendered, then jumped across to the nearbyTorgud. One of his men said he had boarded like Nelson, referring to Horatio Nelson atthe battle of St. Vincent, who took two Spanish ships, jumping from theSan Nicolas to theSan Josef. Jack Aubrey's model in his naval career has always been Lord Nelson.
This novel references actual events with accurate historical detail, like all in this series. In respect to theinternal chronology of the series, it is the second of eleven novels (beginning withThe Surgeon's Mate) that might take five or six years to happen but are all pegged to an extended 1812, or as Patrick O'Brian says it, 1812a and 1812b (introduction toThe Far Side of the World, the tenth novel in this series). The events ofThe Yellow Admiral again match up with the historical years of the Napoleonic wars in sequence, as the first six novels did.
One reviewer finds good writing throughout the novel, whether depicting the tedious work of the naval blockade or the quick thinking needed to deal with Turkish politics, while the other reviewer felt that the novel was not interesting until theSurprise reached the Ionian coast.
Kirkus Reviews found this novel to have splendid adventures and the writing at a stately pace, reviewing it at the reissue in late 1991.[1] Aubrey loses favor inside the Admiralty: "He can't get things right on shore, but he is quick enough to putWorcester to trim, taking slack out of the sails and the crew untilWorcester is the ablest ship in the line bottling up Napoleon's navy in Toulon."[1] Maturin is now married, but he joins Aubrey for this mission, doing some intelligence work. The old ship "gives up the ghost after one too many skirmishes"[1] and Aubrey shifts to HMSSurprise to "tinker with the balance of power at the fringes of the Turkish empire. Splendid adventures at a stately pace."[1]
Publishers Weekly said that Aubrey is caught in a net of Turkish politics and rivalries.[2] First, "there is little excitement as HMSWorcester settles in with the other blockading ships, some with crews showing signs of strain from remaining constantly alert but inactive."[2] "Harte dispatches Aubrey on a delicate mission to the politically volatile Ionian coast." There he navigates the complex politics, though "Aubrey knows that should he fail, the admiral would like nothing better than to throw him to the dogs."[2]
The books in this series by Patrick O'Brian were re-issued in the US byW. W. Norton & Co. in 1992, after a re-discovery of the author and this series by Norton, finding a new audience for the entire series. Norton issuedThe Ionian Mission eleven years after its initial publication, as a paperback in 1992. Ironically, it was a US publisher,J. B. Lippincott & Co., who asked O'Brian to write the first book in the series,Master and Commander published in 1969.Collins picked it up in the UK, and continued to publish each novel as O'Brian completed another story. Beginning withThe Nutmeg of Consolation in 1991, the novels were released at about the same time in the USA (by W W Norton) and the UK (by HarperCollins, the name of Collins after a merger).
Novels prior to 1992 were published rapidly in the US for that new market.[5] Following novels were released at the same time by the UK and US publishers. Collins asked Geoff Hunt in 1988 to do the cover art for the twelve books published by then, withThe Letter of Marque being the first book to have Hunt's work on the first edition. He continued to paint the covers for future books; the covers were used on both USA and UK editions.[6][7] Reissues of earlier novels used the Geoff Hunt covers.[8][9]
The first three Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin novels were published in the US by Lippincott and the next two by Stein & Day. US publication of the novels was not resumed until 1990 until W.W. Norton began a reissue of the series, at first in trade paperback format but later in hardcover. In the UK all the novels untilClarissa Oakes (The Truelove) were published by Collins until the publishing house, through a merger, became HarperCollins.