3 Cassettes, 4 1/2 hoursRead by Robert HardyAbridgedAudioBook contains an illustration of the sails of a square-rigged ship.The 1st installment in OBrians Aubrey/Maturin seriesThe best historical novels ever written...-The New York Times Book ReviewThis, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, Royal Navy, and Stephen Maturin, ships surgeon and intelligence agent, against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars.  Details of life aboard a man-of-war in Nelsons navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the road of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.