Master and Commander is the first of Patrick O'Brian′s now famous Aubrey-Maturin novels and establishes the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey RN and Stephen Maturin, who becomes his secretive ship′s surgeon and an intelligence agent.

Master and Commander contains all the action and excitement of a great historical novel. But it alo displays the qualities which have put O'Brian so far ahead of any of his competitors, including his depiction of the detail of life aboard a Nelsonic man-of-war, of weapons, food, conversation and ambience, of the landscape and of the sea. O'Brian′s portrayal of each of these is faultless and the sense of period throughout is acute.