This, the first in the series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers and sailors, the food, the floggings, the wind and the rigging, and the roar of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.