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'''Treason's Harbour''', (1983) by Patrick O'Brian is a historical novel set during the Napoleonic period and follows the life of two friends, a naval captain and his ship's surgeon.

Contents

Plot summary

Characters in "Treason's Harbour"

Ships in "Treason's Harbour"

The British

The French

Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science

Literary significance & criticism

Reviews

Editions

Sources, references, external links, quotations

Footnotes

Plot summary

In 'Treason's Harbour', as HMS Surprise undergoes repairs at Malta, Aubrey and his crew undertake an assignment involving an untidy, complex, but potentially lucrative mission on behalf of the British East India Company in the Red Sea. However, readers — but not the novel’s protagonists — learn that Wray, an Admiralty official and Admiral Harte’s son-in-law, just posted to Malta, functions as a double agent in the pay of the French. Betrayed even before the mission begins, after much hardship and exertion the British achieve nothing. They narrowly avoid a trap, and Maturin even loses his carefully gathered collections to robbers.
Back in Malta, Aubrey learns that the Navy plans to retire Surprise and that his hoped-for heavy-frigate command has gone to another; a severe blow since it will break up his skilled and loyal crew and might even end his own active career. Maturin, meanwhile, realises that he has become the object of French espionage and takes steps to confound it; however, these steps involve a pretence at a love-affair with an attractive and impoverished naval wife whose husband the French have captured, and this becomes a source of general gossip.
Aubrey and the Surprise proceed on convoy-escort duty to the Adriatic; on the return leg he captures a fine French privateer, and they then depart on a political mission to Zambra with Admiral Harte and the aged HMS Pollux before continuing to Gibraltar. At Zambra the two ships encounter another attempted French trap when an eighty-gun man-of-war and two frigates ambush them. Pollux blows up as the result of action — with Harte on board. Maturin deduces that recent events prove betrayal at a senior level in British intelligence, though he remains unaware of the identity of the traitor.

Characters in "Treason's Harbour"

★ Jack Aubrey - Captain of HMS ''Surprise''.

★ Stephen Maturin - ship's surgeon, friend to Jack and intelligence officer.

★ Sophie Aubrey - Jack's wife

★ Mrs. Williams - Sophie's mother

★ Diana Villiers - Stephen's wife

Ships in "Treason's Harbour"

The British

HMS Surprise

The French

Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science

Literary significance & criticism

Reviews

"Splendid adventures...polished, historically accurate, and intensely pleasurable."—Kirkus Reviews
"O'Brian's narrative...provides endlessly varying shocks and surprises—comic, grim, farcical and tragic. An essential of the truly gripping book for the narrative addict is the creation of a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit, and O'Brian does this with prodigal specificity and generosity." — A.S. Byatt

Editions

★ Collins (1983)

★ Fontana (1984); paperback edition

★ HarperCollins (1997); B-format paperback edition

★ HarperCollins (2003); paperback edition. (ISBN 0 00 649923 6)

★ Recorded Books, LLC; Unabridged Audio edition narrated by Patrick Tull (ISBN 1402591853)

Sources, references, external links, quotations

Footnotes