Though this novel isn't quite as polished or stylish as the author's later work, it's a most honorable ancestor. Their later counterparts are, of course, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, and O'Brian loyalists will have a field day comparing the four characters. What will set devotees of O'Brian's better-known books positively aquiver, though, are the two chief characters: Jack Byron, an enthusiastic midshipman with ``gaudy'' family connections, and his best boyhood friend, Tobias Barrow, an unworldly budding doctor and naturalist. Daily shipboard routine, smoky 1740 London and the Indian community in Chile are all finely detailed. The Wager is shipwrecked off Patagonia, and the largest part of the narrative details the hardships of the diminishing band of survivors on that inhospitable shore. One of our greatest contemporary novelists, Patrick O’Brian is the author of the twenty volumes of the best-selling Aubrey/Maturin series, as well as many other books, including Testimonies, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore, and biographies of Joseph Banks and Picasso. Originally published in England in 1959 and based on British Commodore Anson's 1740 circumnavigation of the world (as was O'Brian's The Golden Ocean), this is the story of HMS Wager, a ship separated from Anson's squadron while sailing around Cape Horn. O'Brian's loyal following for the Aubrey/Maturin historical nautical adventure novels (The Wine-Dark Sea, etc.) has swelled from a cult to a legion of readers thus there are many who will welcome this predecessor to that well-received series.
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