In the last blog, I noted the small park near the Guemes Ferry Landing is a great place to watch the boat traffic in the channel; well, it is also a great place to read a book.  May I suggest The Mauritius Command by Patrick O'Brian.

Many of you already know about the popular writer of maritime historical fiction, Patrick O'Brian.  His series about the adventures of Lucky Jack Aubrey and his companion Dr. Steve Maturn are read nationwide...if not worldwide!  The movie Master and Commander is somewhat patterned after another book in this series.  However, I would like to invite you to read his fourth book entitled The Mauritius Command.

Here O'Brian undertakes more than an exciting sea story about the British Navy in the early 19th Century.  Yes, the sea story with it's battles are included in the story-line.  In addition to the main story-line, however,  O'Brian makes a concious effort to develop his fictional characters in a manner that truly exposes their individual strength and weaknesses -- relative to what we now know of human interaction and human nature today.  Definitely, he places his characters firmly in a time of exploration -- not only ambitious governments exploring new continuents, etc., but also their efforts to dominate these new lands, their brazen contact with native peoples, slavery, small villages, including the early 19th Century naturalist who attempt to catalogue this new world.  Perhaps unwisely, they also attempt to project on to this world their own prejudices and beliefs.

In exposing this all-to-common practice, O'Brian is more like Meville than either Kent or Pope.  Good reading for a day at the beach...