Jack is given command of the 38-gun frigate HMS Boadicea and requested to depart immediately for Plymouth, where he picks up Mr R T Farquhar, a diplomat, and receives further orders to sail to the British station at Cape Town, where the ships of a convoy destined for the Indian Ocean will meet.

The timely capture gives Boadicea the opportunity to send letters home, and the ship gains a French cook and the Hébé's English prisoners, all able seamen.

Jack learns that his loyal coxswain Bonden and steward Killick sailed from the West Indies under Corbett, so he trades men with Néréide to bring them aboard Boadicea.

The convoy is caught in a major tropical cyclone, whence it sails back to Cape Town for repairs, receiving the first mail in many months; Sophia's letters are water-damaged and Jack tries to make sense of them.

Aubrey organizes an attack on La Réunion with help from the active and decisive Lieutenant Colonel Harry Keating and his army regulars stationed on Rodrigues.

La Réunion capitulates almost without loss after simultaneous landings by army troops and sepoys from the British East India Company on both sides of the island.

The occupation is made easier by Stephen's propaganda and political meetings, which help to convince many of the disaffected locals to accept British rule and Farquhar as interim Governor.

Stephen is seriously injured in an accident boarding Néréide, now under Lord Clonfert, which is part of the force sent to capture the strategic Île de la Passe off the island's southeast coast.

While recuperating, Stephen and the ship's doctor, McAdam, attempt to diagnose Clonfert, whose self-consciousness and perceived rivalry with Commodore Aubrey has greatly affected his behavior.

The battle rages for days with heavy casualties, and in the end two British ships, Sirius and Magicienne, run aground in the shallow channel and cannot be heaved off, so are burnt to prevent their capture; Iphigenia and the fort at Île de la Passe are abandoned to be retaken by the French.

A messenger vessel, with Maturin aboard, reaches La Réunion to inform Aubrey of the losses and the failed attack on Port South East.

Boadicea sails through the night to Île de la Passe only to find it under French control, then chases Manche and Vénus in a vain attempt to separate them.

The final invasion of Mauritius, based on Aubrey and Keating's original plan, is an overwhelming victory, and the French surrender after being given honourable terms.

Stephen learns from McAdam that Clonfert, at the military hospital in Port Louis, has committed suicide by removing his bandages, unable to face Jack Aubrey.

Stephen implies in conversation with Mr Peter that Jack's father, General Aubrey, is soon to have significant influence with the Admiralty in London, which rumours are believed by Bertie.

The novel gives further scope to Maturin's role as both a secret agent (in which he uses propaganda effectively to support the British campaign) and as a naturalist (in which he is seen collecting relics of the extinct dodo and solitaire), while Aubrey for the first time experiences naval battles as the "looker-on" while others are directly in the fight.

One theme is the contrast between Aubrey's development in his career and acceptance of what comes, to the insecurity of Clonfert, also a skilled seaman, who had been with him in the West Indies when neither had been "given his step" to commander or captain.

"[4] The military actions of the novel are very closely based upon the real-life Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811, carried out by the Royal Navy under Commodore Josias Rowley with the assistance of army forces under Harry Keating.

There are other differences from the historical events, one being that the French captain of the Vénus, Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin, was not killed in action and actually survived the encounter, surrendering to the British and going on to honor in France.

The story of the Russian Captain Golovnin aboard the ship Diana, caught at a British port when the national alliances changed while he was sailing, refers to an historical situation which occurred in the same year that the squadron to take the two French islands was assembled.

This is the popular version of a quotation from Pliny the Elder, "unde etiam vulgare Graeciae dictum semper aliquid novi Africam adferre".

[6] Throughout the novel there are many other allusions and quotes, including some credited to Alexander Pope, Pliny the Elder, Samuel Johnson, Horace, Lewis Carroll, and from King Lear by Shakespeare.

But its substance is more beguiling still..." —Elizabeth Peer, Newsweek[8][9] Kirkus Reviews found the language of the novel to be "shot through with unobtrusive culture and period texture that flows like a serenade".

[1] Richard Snow wrote in 1991 that he had read the novels from Master and Commander to Desolation Island from American publishers twenty years earlier.

"[2] Kevin Myers wrote in The Irish Times that "O'Brian's sheer brilliance as a writer constantly dazzles, and his power over the reader is unique.

No writer alive can move one as O'Brian can; no one can make you laugh so loud with hilarity, whiten your knuckles with unbearable tension or choke with emotion.