Patrick O'Brian
Visits the "HMS" Rose 

To announce The Commodore, volume seventeen of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, his New york publisher W.W. Norton & Company Inc. hosted a press reception aboard the Tall Ship "HMS" Rose in New York City on April 14, 1995. The pictures on these pages have not been previously published anywhere else. Mr. & Mrs. O'Brian spent about three hours aboard Rose exploring the ship and meeting about 250 guests who were the leaders of publishing and news media in the United States. Mr. O'Brian demonstrated his abundant knowledge of ships of the period with many questions and observations. Additional photographs from the event available here: Mr. O'Brian tours the ship with Walter Cronkite and Captain Bailey. Mr. O'Brian gives a personal demonstration of the ships canons. Patrick O'Brian, his publisher, and Mrs. O'Brian. In may ways, novelist and biographer Patrick O'Brian could have walked out of the pages of his own books. He is a gifted linguist, respected translator, student of natural history, experienced seaman, master literary stylist, connoisseur of wine and expert in the details--from the most significant to the most arcane--of the world about which he writes. It is wealth of knowledge that makes O'Brian's novels about early nineteenth century naval life so gripping. Born in 1914, Patrick O'Brian spent his early years in Ireland, England and France. Despite frequent periods of illnesses, which were given over to endless reading, he soon made an acquaintance with the sea. A family friend's barque-rigged merchantman, converted into an ocean-going yacht, allowed him to learn to hand, reef and steer in the tradition of the great sailing ships of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1952, O'Brian published his novel Testimonies, which was hailed by Delmore Schwartz as "a triumph." Subsequently, he wrote his first naval adventures, The Golden Ocean and The Unknown Shore, and translated many books from French into English, including all of Simone de Beauvoir's later work. In the late 1960's he wrote Master and Commander, inaugurating his famous series of novels, set during the Napoleonic Wars, about Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his friend, Dr. Stephen Maturin. With interruptions for the writing of acclaimed biographies of Picasso and the eighteenth century naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, the Aubrey/Maturin novels (all published by W. W. Norton & Company) have followed one another at a steady pace and been published to ever-increasing popularity and critical praise. Blue at the MIzzen is the final novel in the series. is a replica of the 18th century British frigate HMS Rose which sailed from 1757 to 1799, she is about the same size as HMS Surprise, known to all who have read Mr. O'Brian's books. Although, the present day Rose closely resembles her American Colonial era predecessor, she represents a frigate of about a generation before HMS Surprise. The modern day Rose provides an adventure education experience to people of all ages as she sails the Atlantic Ocean between North America, Europe and the West Indies.