Ashore without a command--and on half-pay to boot--Jack Aubrey's prayers are answered when Stephen Maturin shows up with a secret mission for him. The two men have been ordered to the Cape of Good Hope. There they hope to dislodge the French garrisons on the islands of Mauritius and La Reunion.

This tale begins with Jack Aubrey arriving home from his exploits in the Mediterranean to find England at peace following the Treaty of Amiens. He and his friend Stephen Maturin, surgeon and secret agent, begin to live the lives of country gentlemen, hunting, entertaining and enjoying more amorous adventures. Their comfortable existence, however, is cut short when Jack is overnight reduced to a pauper with enough debts to keep him in prison for life....

Aubrey and Maturin are caught in the outbreak of the War of 1812.

Despondent over debts and troubles at home, Jack Aubrey is sent to the Mediterranean to join the Royal Navy's blockade of the French port of Toulon. There, he confronts an admiral he cuckholded years before, embarks on a secret mission, becomes embroiled in political conflict, and, with his friend Stephen, faces the choppiest waters of his career.

As Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are on their way home to report their latest victory to the government, they are menaced by those out to capture Maturin for his actions against the French intelligence network in the New World.

This segment of the Aubrey saga is set in Malta, where the captain's "small, sweet-sailing frigate" is undergoing repairs. The island, however, is swarming with Napoleonic agents, which means that Stephen Maturin must do everything in his power to avert sabotage.

Dispatched with his ship, the Surprise, to restore order after an attack on a British whaler in Tonga, Captain Aubrey discovers Clarissa Harvill, an escaped female convict, stowed away in the cable-tier. Reprint.

Two men, Captain Jack Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship's doctor and intelligence agent, become fast friends aboard a man-of-war ship during the Napoleonic wars.

The continuing saga of the Royal Navy's Captain Jack Aubrey, now being sued by slaveholders for the ships he confiscated off Africa. At the same his wife is after him for his affair with a mistress. Things improve when he goes to sea to fight the French and captures a ship with gold.

A Royal Navy warship is dispatched to the Pacific to help Chile fight for its independence from Spain. Twentieth volume in a series featuring Captain Jack Aubery and ship's doctor Stephen Maturin.