While Jules Verne and Herman Melville tend to be most remembered because of their strong relationship with the sea, no one wrote as much about it than Patrick O’Brian. His work consists of a series of 20 books that record the chronicles of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.

The stories have two iconic main characters: Jack Aubrey, naval captain in the Royal Navy, and the physician Stephen Maturin. The series began with a book called Master and Commander. O’Brian has always been highly praised as a writer especially since he included a wealth of detail in his books that depict faithfully the society of the time and the protocols of the Royal Navy.

Patrick O’Brian was born in 1914 in Buckinghamshire, England. Although his books portray the Royal Navy, O’Brian enlisted in the Royal Air Force, becoming a pilot during World War II.

The success O’Brian was not immediate. The series of Aubrey-Maturin books would only see the light of day after it caught the attention of an American editor. And this occurred at the end of the author’s life. This new projection was crucial for the series to become one of the main portraits of naval life in the history of literature.

O’Brian also had a lot of controversy associated with his life. As soon as the book series became known, the media published details about his private life, especially his name change during the war. He did not like talking about the past, so it was quite upset to see information about his life published in the media. O’Brian died in 2000 while working on his next book.

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