Name: Master and Commander
ISBN: 9780006141822

Master and Commander

This is book 1 in the Aubrey/Maturin series. Here is the maiden voyage of O'Brian's acclaimed Aubrey-Maturin series, which follows the unique friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. O'Brian renders in riveting detail the life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the roar of broadsides as the great ships close in battle. - Publisher.

What Hacker News says

contingenciesOct 2026

Seconded. I have two copies of this book, love it, and just lent one out last week. In exchange, I received Master and Commander, which is an awesome reminder of the bygone floridity of educated English. Currently also working through Mumford's Technics and Civilization (1934) in connection with a pan-cultural inquiry in to machine tool evolution stemming from workshop-based inspiration in my robotics lab.

The stick charts are generally not 'charts' in the normal English sense but rather more like memory palaces for not-to-scale directed graphs. I have a big interest in Pacific cultural artifacts as I started a collection some years ago and live amongst it. Nothing like a giant jungle-struck hardwood oar or a primitive giant balanced hafted axe to make buttering your croissant with illicit Iranian jam an enhanced pleasure at breakfast.

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CyberFalcon_42Sep 2026

If you've seen the movie master and commander and liked it, or are interested in a long series with 20 well written books, I'd recommend Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian. It's book one of the Aubrey–Maturin series. It's historical naval fiction, written in the 1970s so the style is a touch more formal than current books but you can sense the "classiness" of the writing.

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niemandhierAug 2026

I liked Master and Commander, I still prefer C.S. Forrester’s “Hornblower” books.

Forrester is the Andy Weir of naval warfare with sailing ships. Even the tiny technical details are well researched.

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jimnotgymAug 2026

Well after that article and these comments, I need to burn a lot of books, art and music that I once loved.

I used to love Millais' 'Ophelia', but he now seems arrogant and even bedded his patrons wife. The scandal. On the fire.

I used to love the Rolling Stones, but it seems they took drugs and held concerts organised by an organised crime group. On the fire.

Master and Commander was one of the most touching and uplifting reads of my life, all at a tragic time for me. But he left his wife, didn't like talking about his past and wrote under a book de plume, it seems. On the fire.

I loved Oscar Wilde's work, but the rogue was a jail bird, and very arrogant. On the fire

Can we compile an approved list of quality works from faultless individuals? I don't want to be sullied by their human faults...AI slop to the rescue

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tmoertelAug 2026

> Please please suggest me some books where language and style of speaking sentences takes the crown rather than the story being the selling point.

I will give you approximately twenty delightful novels where the prose and the stories are both excellent: Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey–Maturin series.

I avoided these books for the longest time because I didn't believe I was the kind of person who would read “books about tall ships.” But so many people recommend these particular books because of the masterly writing that I tried the first, Master and Commander. Immediately, I was taken by O’Brian’s writing: vivid, lively, and engaging, while also utterly precise.

Give that first novel a try. It’s not easy, but it is oh so rewarding.

Edited to add some examples from the first novel:

“I have never yet known a man admit that he was either rich or asleep: perhaps the poor man and the wakeful man have some great moral advantage.”

“Where there was no equality there was no companionship: when a man was obliged to say ‘Yes, sir,’ his agreement was of no worth even if it happened to be true.”

“He held up two fingers, in case a landman might not fully comprehend so great a number.”

“But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”

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pomianMay 2026

Recommend the whole series of books! Starting with Master and Commander. The books are also available in audiobook, read by Simon Vance. An awesome series of books. Beware, when you start... There are over 20 volumes in the series, and it's hard to stop.

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