The Yellow Admiral

PATRICK O’BRIAN

The Yellow Admiral

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper

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Copyright © Patrick O’Brian 1997

Patrick O’Brian asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006499640

Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007429271 Version: 2016-10-05

FOR MARY, WITH LOVE

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Diagram of a Square-Rigged Ship

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

‘Speech at the Painted Hall, Greenwich’ by William Waldegrave

Keep Reading

About the Author

The Works of Patrick O’Brian

About the Publisher

The sails of a square-rigged ship, hung out to dry in a calm.

1 Flying jib

2 Jib

3 Fore topmast staysail

4 Fore staysail

5 Foresail, or course

6 Fore topsail

7 Fore topgallant

8 Mainstaysail

9 Main topmast staysail

10 Middle staysail

11 Main topgallant staysail

12 Mainsail, or course

13 Maintopsail

14 Main topgallant

15 Mizzen staysail

16 Mizzen topmast staysail

17 Mizzen topgallant staysail

18 Mizzen sail

19 Spanker

20 Mizzen topsail

21 Mizzen topgallant

Illustration source: Serres, Liber Nauticus.

Courtesy of The Science and Technology Research Center, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundation

Chapter One

Sir Joseph Blaine, a heavy, yellow-faced man in a suit of grey clothes and a flannel waistcoat, walked down St James’s Street, across the park, and so to the Admiralty, which he entered from behind, opening the private door with a key and making his way to the large, shabby room in which he had his official being.

He looked over the papers on his desk, nodded, and touched the bell. ‘If Mr Needham is in the way, pray show him up,’ he said to the answering clerk. He half rose as Needham appeared and waved him to a comfortable chair on the other side of the desk. ‘Having finished with poor Delaney,’ he said, ‘we now come to another gentleman of whom we have no news: Stephen Maturin. Dr Stephen Maturin, perhaps our most valuable adviser on Spanish affairs.’

‘I do not think I have heard his name.’

‘I do not suppose you have: yet you and your people have quite certainly found his cipher at the foot of many a cogent report. When he is going up and down in the world on our behalf, as he so often does…’ Sir Joseph stifled an ‘or did’ and carried on, ‘he almost invariably sails with Captain Aubrey, whose name is no doubt familiar.’

‘Oh, certainly,’ said Needham, who wished to make a good impression on this formidable figure, but whose talents did not really lie in that direction. ‘The gentleman who was so unfortunate at the Guildhall trial.’ This reference to Captain Aubrey’s stand in the pillory did not seem to be well received and to remedy the situation Needham added a knowing ‘Son to the notorious General Aubrey.’

‘If you wish,’ said Sir Joseph coldly. ‘Yet he might also be described as the officer who, commanding a fourteen-gun brig, took a thirty-two-gun Spanish xebec-frigate and carried her into Mahon in the year one; who cut out the French frigate Diane in a boat-attack on the heavily guarded port of Saint-Martin; and who, most recently, returning with his squadron from a most active cruise against slavery in the Gulf of Guinea, utterly frustrated the French descent on the south of Ireland, driving a line-of-battle ship on the rocks, to saying nothing of … Yes, Mr Carling?’ – this to a secretary.

‘The pardons, sir, engrossed at last,’ said Carling, laying them on Sir Joseph’s desk. ‘Those you asked for particularly are on top.’ He made his usual ghost-like exit.

Sir Joseph glanced at their effective date, well before Maturin’s departure for Spain, nodded and went on, ‘To revert to Dr Maturin, for whom we here are particularly concerned, and on behalf of whom we should value any assistance your people can give us – one of these,’ – holding up a parchment – ‘refers to him. You probably know more about the late Duke of Habachtsthal than I do, the kind of men he privately mixed with, and the creatures he employed for some of his activities.’