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(More customer reviews)In O'Brian's first novel of the sea, The Golden Ocean, which is factual in its essential details, Commodore Anson set out in 1740 to circumnavigate the globe. Of his small fleet, only Anson's flagship survives to return to England loaded with gold and silver taken from a Spanish galleon. (Spain has every right to take great pride in its role of financing the Royal Navy for the good part of a century.)
One of the ships that began that fateful but historic voyage, the Wager, is driven by a fierce storm onto the rocky coast of Chile and wrecked. The Unknown Shore is the story of the travails of those who survived the disaster only to experience new tragedies, some of their own making, ashore. Only a few of those who made it ashore survive. Guided and otherwise given aid by natives, those few reach safety in Valparaiso, Chile.
As in all of O'Brian's remarkably well-written stories, his narrative of The Unknown Shore is rich, delightful, flawless. His attention to detai! ! l is splendid, and splendidly set down. The central characters in this book are a midshipman named Jack Byron and a surgeon's mate named Tobias Barrow. Barrow is totally inept with any of the demands of survival in the rough, but Byron provides him with the inspiration to persevere.
A fine story of depravation and wild adventure, told with O'Brian's top-notch craftsmanship. Jack Byron and Tobias Barrow are credible stand-ins for Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, yet to come in O'Brian's much more famous Aubrey/Maturin sagas, fans of which will be delighted with this precursor to that 18-book series.
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