Онүш Бір Мерзімдік Салют

1989 novel by Patrick O'Brian

The Thirteen Gun Salute is the thirteenth historical novel in the Aubrey–Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1989. The story is set during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. This novel constitutes the first of a five novel circumnavigation of the globe; other novels in this voyage include The Nutmeg of Consolation, Clarissa Oakes/The Truelove, The Wine Dark Sea, and The Commodore. Spain hears that England may be supporting the independence of its colonies in South America, while an envoy is needed in the Malay states to gain an ally for England. These two changes alter Aubrey's mission from his private man of war, Surprise en route to South America. They learn this at Lisbon, where Surprise parts company under Tom Pullings. Aubrey is reinstated on the Navy List in London and gains command of HMS Diane, carrying the envoy to negotiate a treaty with Pulo Prabang and Maturin gains a stay in a naturalist's paradise. Then the Diane is en route to a rendezvous with Surprise, when shoals and a typhoon challenge the Diane and her crew. Reviews of this novel follow the plot but are more properly reviews of the series to date, as W W Norton began publishing the series of novels in the US. Richard Snow, writing in The New York Times, said they were "the best historical novels ever written."

This novel references actual events with accurate historical detail, like all in this series. In respect to the internal chronology of the series, it is the seventh of eleven novels (beginning with The Surgeon's Mate) that might take five or six years to happen but are all pegged to an extended 1812, or as Patrick O'Brian says it, 1812a and 1812b (introduction to The Far Side of the World, the tenth novel in this series). The events of The Yellow Admiral again match up with the historical years of the Napoleonic wars in sequence, as the first six novels did.

This story starts a few months after The Letter of Marque ends, with the Surprise ready for the South American voyage imagined at the time of her letter of marque. The crew aboard Surprise is unchanged, save for those men who use their prize money from the first cruise of the Surprise to set up inns or pubs, collectively called Aubrey's Arms. All but one of the high level spies appear in this novel, specifically Ledward and Wray, who had fled to France in The Letter of Marque and are now arrived in Pulo Prabang as part of Duplessis's mission, as Ledward can translate for Duplessis. After seeing Gough in the French privateer, Maturin reflects on his life since the rising in 1798, rereading old diaries that tell when he began his work with intelligence to the purposes of defeating Napoleon, supporting Irish independence and freeing Catalonia, after meeting Aubrey.

The uneven pace of re issues in the US is noted by Kirkus Reviews, who listed this thirteenth novel in the Aubrey Maturin series after their own reviews of two books much earlier in the series (HMS Surprise and The Mauritius Command, third and fourth in the series respectively). Dr Stephen Maturin is described as "an intellectual counterpoint to Jack's more physical presence." After a nod to the story, they conclude that "the ultimate appeal of the Aubrey/Maturin adventures lies in O'Brian's delicious old fashioned prose, the wonderfully complex sentences that capture the feel of the sea and the culture of the great warships, all the while sketching with apparent accuracy and truth the early 19th century world." Maturin's stay in the valley "where he blissfully encounters and studies a variety of tame exotic beasts" is called "charming". The writing style, structure, and plot are remarked favorably, including many incidents of The Thirteen Gun Salute: "The novels display a dazzling receptiveness to language, an understanding of period speech so entire that it never needs to preen itself although here and there it does. There is a recklessness with plot that is intentionally subversive of the genre. Climactic scenes are deliberately thrown away, revealed in casual conversation. The narrative pauses to digress on orangutans in Borneo, the cuisine of Portugal, a Mozart quartet. The twists of plot are swift, drastic, on occasion comic, on occasion grotesque: in this novel, Maturin's way of dealing with two English traitors at the Malay court of Pulo Prabang draws casually and lethally on his knowledge of zoology and his skill as an anatomist."

Lois Montbertrand published an article concerning O'Brian's use of A. E. Housman's poem "Bells in the Tower" in this novel. She explains how O'Brian uses the fragment of the poem in the plot, as one character wants to get closer to Stephen Maturin, while Stephen Maturin would rather not.