It was praised as part of "O'Brian's superb series on the early-19th-century adventures" of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin,[1] and specifically marked as "Splendid escape.

"[1] Sailing into Halifax, the victorious HMS Shannon contends with her losses in officers and crew, with particular concern for Captain Broke, who lies unconscious from head wounds.

Captain Dalgleish on the mail packet Diligence carries the copy of the official report, and Aubrey, Maturin and Mrs Villiers as passengers.

He gives Johnson's private papers to Sir Joseph Blaine, asks him for Diana's release, and gets Skinner as a lawyer for Aubrey to deal with the projector.

The Colonel boards the Ariel, while the Catalan garrison travels in troop transports to Spain with Aeolus as escort, again navigating the narrow channels past Denmark.

From English newspapers, Aubrey learns that HMS Ajax took Méduse, making his efforts worthwhile, and that Miss Smith is married.

In another session, newly arrived Johnson identifies Maturin as the killer of two French agents, after an interrogator says someone has paid "half Golconda" for his release.

Maturin agrees to go with Duhamel, who takes them out of the Temple, picks up Diana, and remarks how Aubrey's escape shaft will be the explanation for their disappearance.

Kirkus Reviews find the story literate and amusing, and "polished, historically accurate, and intensely pleasurable tales" from the era of the Napoleonic Wars.

[2] The many actions in the plot are noted: "This time out, Captain Jack Aubrey and ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin limp home from America for a brief rest before sailing to the Baltic to subvert the occupying Catalan troops—and then to the Bay of Biscay to run aground ...

[1] Once in England, Maturin proceeds to France with the war still on, "Armed with safe conduct papers, he lectures on natural history and installs Villiers in Paris.

"[1] In 1807, the Spanish government, at that time allied with France, had sent 15,000 troops to Denmark to act as a garrison against a possible British landing there.

Robertson escaped to Heligoland (then a British possession) to inform Admiral Richard Goodwin Keats of the agreement, and a fleet of transports escorted by HMS Superb embarked 9,000 Spanish soldiers.

The island named in the novel is fictional, but positioned off the Pomeranian coast and its garrisons were in similar ignorance of the progress of the war regarding their homeland.

The imprisonment of Aubrey and Maturin in the Temple prison in Paris may echo the case of Captain Sidney Smith, captured on 19 April 1796 while attempting to cut out a French ship in Le Havre.

Smith remained held in Paris for two years, despite a number of efforts to exchange him and frequent contacts with both French Royalists and British agents.

They brought him to Le Havre, where he boarded a fishing boat and then transferred to a British frigate on patrol in the English Channel, arriving in London on 8 May 1798.

(copied in whole, for later use in its parts) Great men can afford anachronism, and indeed it is rather agreeable to find Criseyde reading the lives of the saints or Hamlet going to school at Wittenberg; but perhaps the ordinary writer should not take many liberties with the past.

I believe he was mistaken in assuming that no Englishman ever spoke of eau de Cologne before that time; but his letter made me uneasy in my mind, all the more so since in this present book I have deliberately kept Sir James Saumarez in the Baltic some months after he had taken the Victory home and struck his flag.

In the first draft I had relied on the Dictionary of National Biography, which maintained the Admiral in command for my chosen period: but then, checking in the memoirs of one of his subordinates, I found that in fact another man had taken his place.

Yet I did want to say something about Saumarez, an outstanding example of a particular type of sea-officer of that time, deeply religious, extremely capable, and a most effective diplomat, so as I really could not rearrange the calendar any more I decided to leave things as they were, although out of some obscure feeling of respect for that noble ship I omitted all reference to the Victory.

Beginning with The Nutmeg of Consolation in 1991, the novels were released at about the same time in the USA (by W W Norton) and the UK (by HarperCollins, the name of Collins after a merger).

But shipping arrangements do no damage to these polished, historically accurate, and intensely pleasurable tales of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic era.

[8][9] In 2014, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of author Patrick O'Brian, BBC Radio 4 aired a 10-part adaptation of The Surgeon's Mate, with Benedict Cumberbatch as narrator.