num_pages: 327
description: Struck off the Navy List for a crime he did not commit, Jack Aubrey takes command of a privateer and begins a voyage which may, just may, restore him to the rank. Jack Aubrey is a naval officer, a post-captain of experience and capacity. When The Letter of Marque opens he has been struck off the Navy List for a crime he has not committed. With Aubrey is his friend and ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin, who is also an unofficial British intelligence agent. Maturin has bought for Aubrey his old ship the Surprise, so that the misery of ejection from the service can be palliated by the command of what Aubrey calls a 'private man-of-war' -- a letter of marque, a privateer. Together they sail on a voyage which, if successful, might restore Aubrey to the rank, and the raison d'etre, whose loss he so much regrets. Around these simple, ostensibly familar elements Patrick O'Brian has written a novel of great narrative power, exploring his extraordinary world once more, in a tale full of human feeling and rarely matched in its drama.
language: English
title: The Letter of Marque
titlecomplete: The Letter of Marque (Aubrey/Maturin Book 12)
characters: Stephen Maturin, Jack Aubrey
genres: Adventure, British Literature, Historical, Maritime, Novels, War, Historical Fiction, Audiobook, Fiction, Military Fiction
ratings_count: 10757
series: Aubrey & Maturin
publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Canada, Limited