The Unknown Shore (Paperback, New Ed)

'The Unknown Shore', Patrick O'Brian's second novel about the sea and a worthy ancestor of the Aubrey-Maturin novels, tells the tale of the 'Wager', an ill-fated ship on Anson's expedition round the world. Parted from her squadron, the 'Wager' is driven on to rocks and sinks off the coast of Chile. The survivors include Jack Byron, a midshipman, and his protégé Toby, an alarmingly naïve surgeon's mate with a single-minded devotion to zoology. Faced with a surplus of rum, a disappearing stock of food, and a hard, detested captain, the survivors soon descend into trouble of every kind including drunkenness, mutiny and bloodshed.

Admirers of O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels will see in Jack Byron, a matter-of-fact, bluff precursor to the great Jack Aubrey, whilst Toby is an amiable companion whose vagaries afford endless diversion on a hard and dramatic journey.

“'The Unknown Shore' has the same elements that mark Mr O’Brian’s more recent works: the wealth of social detail, the quiet humour, the harrowing shipwrecks, the swashbuckling adventures in foreign parts – and most important, the abiding and unlikely friendship between two young men, one a sociable creature born to the sea and the other a surgeon’s mate, brilliant in scientific understanding but lacking in social graces.”
TAMAR LEWIN, 'NewYork Times'

“Patrick O’Brian is the doyen of naval fiction…'The Unknown Shore' is satisfyingly filled with details of naval life, of natural history, and of the political and social background to the narrative. It is written with all the wit, scholarship and meticulous attention to detail which are characteristic of its 18 successors.”
PETER GORB, 'Ham & High'