On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner,...

This is the little-known story of how a newly independent nation was challenged by four Muslim powers and what happened when America's third president decided to stand up to intimidation. When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, America faced a crisis. The new nation was deeply in debt and needed its economy to grow quickly, but its merchant ships were under attack. Pirates from North Africa's Barbary coast routinely captured American sailors...

"'We've beat them before and we'll beat them again.' In 1803 Napoleon smashes the Peace of Amiens, and Captain Jack Aubrey, R. N., taking refuge in France from his creditors, is interned. He escapes from France, from debtors' prison, and from a possible mutiny, and pursues his quarry straight into the mouth of a French-held harbor." -- back cover.

During WWII, on board a ship in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, an event occurs unlike any that the United States Navy has ever experienced. A ship's captain is removed from his command by his executive officer in an apparent outright act of mutiny. As the trial of the mutineers unfold, it comes to light that Captain Queeg was mentally unstable, perhaps even insane. The Navy must then decide if the Caine Mutiny is a criminal act or an act of courage to save...

"O'Brian is one author who can put a spark of character into the sawdust of time, and The Ionian Mission is another rattling good yarn." —Stephen Vaughan, The Observer

Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin return in this novel to the seas where they first sailed as shipmates. But Jack is now a senior captain commanding a line-of-battle ship in the Royal Navy's blockade of Toulon, and this is a longer, harder, colder war than...

Analyzes the multinational conflicts that set the stage for World War II, the Chinese communist revolution, and the Korean War, documenting Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 diplomatic mission in the Pacific through which the United States forged ill-fated covert agreements.

The Letter of Marque continues the saga of Jack Aubrey, brilliant yet disgraced officer, and Stephan Maturin, ship's surgeon and British intelligence operator. Together they sail on a desperate mission against the French, which, if successful, may redeem Aubrey from the private hell of his disgrace.

Captain Jack Aubrey is ashore on half pay without a command, until Stephen Maturin arrives with secret orders for Aubrey to take a frigate to the Cape of Good Hope under a commodore's pennant. Once there he is to mount an expedition against the French-held islands of Mauritius and La Réunion. But the difficulties of carrying out his orders are compounded by two of his own captains—Lord Clonfert, a pleasure-seeking dilettante, and Captain

...

Captain Jack Aubrey has been getting into trouble during his time ashore, his trusting nature causing him problems in both business and cards. His friend, surgeon Stephen Maturin, is having a little trouble of his own. Commissioned to rescue Governor Bligh of Bounty fame, Captain Aubrey Maturin sail the Leopard to Australia with a hold full of convicts. Among them is a beautiful and dangerous spy—and a treacherous disease that decimates the

...

Jack Aubrey, commander of the best-armed frigate in the Royal Navy, leaves the Dutch East Indies to return to England in a dispatch vessel, but the outbreak of the War of 1812 delays his journey and draws him into bloody battle.