Book Review: Master and Commander

I knew that nothing good could come from my purchase of Master and Commander, the first book in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series. I would either hate it, making the book a waste of time and money, or love it, consigning myself to read the next 19 in the series. The series had some appeal for me, as I’ve been interested in naval matters since I was a small child, because I rather enjoyed the Weir film, and because that film had inspired a number of intelligent responses from the blogosphere, indicating that reasonable people take the series seriously. The most fascinating response, of course, came from Christopher Hitchens, whose central complaint about the film is that it gave too little credit to the contrarian intellectual. . .

For good or ill, I quite liked the first novel. Aubrey and Maturin are both rich, complex heroes, each having great virtues and occasionally devastating faults. The relationship between them grows perhaps a trifle too quickly, although I can understand why O’Brian felt it necessary to push forward. I doubt that he knew he would be writing another 19 books on the same characters, after all. The action is genuinely compelling, as is the historical context. As O’Brian notes in the forward, most of the events in the novels are taken from reports of actual Royal Navy engagements, and these engagements were often nothing less than magnificent.

The battle sequences reminded me, not surprisingly, of the Trafalgar chapter in John Keegan’s The Price of Admiralty. In The Price of Admiralty, Keegan tries to do for naval warfare what he did for land warfare in The Face of Battle, which gave a soldiers perspective on the battles of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. The Price of Admiralty isn’t nearly as successful, except for the Trafalgar chapter, which does manage to bring the spirit of 19th century naval warfare to the reader. For those not familiar, a Royal Navy squadron led by Lord Nelson destroyed a French and Spanish squadron of similar size in 1805 at Trafalgar, although Nelson lost his life in the battle. If you’ve ever been to Trafalgar Square and wondered who the guy on top of the pedestal was, now you know.

The debate between material and skill has most typically concerned itself with land warfare. In short, the question comes down to whether material (numbers and technology) or skill (tactical training and experience) is most decisive in combat. Both, of course, are necessary, but the general idea is that as technology has advanced, material differences have become increasingly important to outcomes. The role played by material is never, however, as important as the advocates of technology claim; witness the skillfulness of our Al Qaeda opponents in Afghanistan in using the surface of the earth to avoid US air strikes and eliminate our technological advantage. The exception to this last may be in the case of naval warfare, where material really does seem to have taken a critical lead over skill. Compared to the land, the sea, at least for modern vessels, is a relatively uncomplicated battlespace. This means that the differences between skilled and unskilled opponents are relatively smaller than on the land, and therefore that material should carry more decisive weight.

Largely, this formula held true in World War II. Although you can identify a number of engagements in which skill really did make a difference, including several night actions off Savo Island near Guadalcanal where Japanese skill made up for material deficiency, or various carrier actions during the war, in which American repair skill saved ships that the Japanese would have lost, or a few engagements between the Royal Navy and the Italian Navy, the side with material advantage tended to carry the day. This holds true for World War I, as well. At the Battle of Jutland, probably the most boring cataclysmic naval engagement of history, the German and British navies simply rubbed up against one another until the Germans decided to go home, with both sides taking casualties proportional to the material they brought. The exception to this might be anti-submarine warfare, a battlespace whose complexity rivals that of the mountainous regions of Afghanistan, and where the differences in skill between Americans, Japanese, and the British had an important impact on outcomes.

None of the above, however, holds true of naval warfare in the Napoleonic Wars. The sea is a simple battlespace if you don’t need to concern yourself with using the wind for propulsion. When you do, skill becomes absolutely essential for victory. At Trafalgar, the British prevailed by understanding and being able to manipulate the wind to good effect. The material equivalence between forces was rendered irrelevant by superior Royal Navy skill. Royal Navy ships could move faster, turn faster, and fire faster than their opponents. Indeed, a typical RN ship could fire three broadsides to two for a Spanish or French ship, with greater accuracy, simply because of the discipline, skill, and training of the British.

What’s the punch line? Novels about Napoleonic naval warfare are inherently more interesting than novels about modern naval warfare, because they deal with people, personalities, and relationships. Aubrey wins engagements because of the way he treats his crew and the way they feel about him, rather than because he has some sort of super secret silent propulsion system. Combat effectiveness depends on the establishment of a social universe in which everyone plays a role. Establishing a social universe, whether that universe is a single ship or the entire Royal Navy, opens the door to countless interesting stories about people, their problems, and their relationships. This makes an O’Brian novel inherently more interesting than, for example, a Tom Clancy novel. It also doesn’t hurt that he can write.

So, now I’m stuck. I plan to finish the twentieth novel sometime in 2007.