Talk:Desolation Island (novel)

message: - is it really correct? In The Thirteen Gun Salute there's following piece of dialogue, disproving that identification: 
"Kerguelen is what some people call Desolation Island, is it not, sir?" asked Richardson.
"So they do. But it is not our Desolation Island, which is smaller, farther south and east. And there is another in about fifty-eight south, to larboard just as you clear the Magellan Strait. I believe there are a good many places that have been called Desolation at one time or another, which is a pretty comment on a sailor's life."
This should be somewhat cleared, in my opinion; and relinked, if the location relates to any actually existing location in the southern hemisphere. --87.249.145.69 (talk) 19:33, 4 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: POB often puts in material to disguise his sources. In this case POB's description of the harbour is taken from Cook's description of Christmas Harbour on Kerguelen.Dabbler (talk) 18:15, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Desolation Island is currently linked to the [[Kerguelen Islands]] article -  

message: I do not understand what you mean by “British style”, or how that would change the position of Louisa Wogan. Mrs. Wogan’s value as an American intelligence source had been destroyed when she was caught back in England. She was sentenced to be hanged, which was lessened to penal transport to Australia by the actions of a high British authority with whom she apparently had known rather well.  Thus, her usefulness as an American agent was gone. The reason Joseph Banks placed Maturin in close association with her onboard ship was to allow him time to mine her for information on the extent of the American intelligence service in Britain, a task all the more important in the face of deteriorating relationships between the two nations and the imminent threat of war. That, and placing Maturin out of the way in the case his powers were diminishing being the second and unstated reason for the mission. Maturin, however, not only learned a great deal about the US intelligence service, but he also took the opportunity to plant misinformation in the hands of Mrs. Wogan in the hopes of undermining the various French intelligence services. The bogus documents he created and passed to her through Herapath he termed “poison.” Through them he hoped to cause American and subsequently French intelligence services to think that certain French operatives were double agents under the pay of Britain, hopefully causing distrust, internal purges, interservice assassinations, and a general disruption in their intelligence function. 
The wound to Capt. Aubrey is important because it knocked him senseless, nearly killed him, put his leg in jeopardy and gave rise to the idea in Grant’s head that Capt. Aubrey was unable to command, and that he should supersede him. Grant had been undermining Aubrey for some time. However, when the ship struck ice Grant behaved admirably as they struggled together to keep the ship afloat. When the crew were exhausted and the ship low in the water a crisis was at hand. Aubrey would have preferred Grant stay with the ship, but he did not begrudge him taking the boats, and made sure the boats were provisioned for their long journey north to the Cape. Regardless of the relationship between the two men, the injury to Capt. Aubrey is mentioned in the next paragraph of the article, so the earlier editors apparently thought it worth mentioning. My thinking is that it is better to mention it in time and place, rather than bringing it up later as a partial explanation. Thanks for your consideration. AliciaZag13 (talk) 23:51, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: British style meant you were adding American style text, requiring someone to come after you to fix it to British style, which is the form of English for this article. You can see that on the edit text page with a template about the English variation Engvar up in the first few lines. The second point is that Aubrey gets seriously injured often, it is war. Most of the injuries are bad, but as a lead character in the series, he always recovers. I agree it was a bad injury, but it is not crucial to the plot line, as he recovers, and the plot summary never says he recovered, and does not need to say that. Grant never thought Aubrey was more capable as a Captain than himself. The injury let Grant add an item to his already long list in his mind bolstering his view of his own abilities, and his inability to follow the orders of his captain under his inappropriate view for a man in the Royal Navy, so causes disruption and splits the crew. The change was just more words, when plot summaries are required to be concise, no more than 800 words. The summary is already longer than 800 words, so a change with non-essential actions was reverted. I hope that is clear to you now.  -- Prairieplant (talk) 05:09, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plot summary edits