Chapter 1 Summary

Jack Aubrey is penniless and disgraced, wrongly convicted of crimes and discharged from the Royal Navy. Stephen Maturin, Aubrey's particular friend, has purchased Surprise, a frigate recently sold out of the naval service. Maturin refits Surprise and Aubrey commands her on a series of short but lucrative raids. Aubrey's situation improves over time, and he is reinstated in the Royal Navy, while Maturin travels to Sweden and is reconciled with his beautiful wife Diana.

The novel is set in England during 1813, or a fictional extension of that year, during the Napoleonic wars between England and France. Ex-captain Jack Aubrey has been dismissed from the Royal Navy for financial impropriety in a scandalous case involving stock market fixing. Though he was not involved in the crime, he was nevertheless found guilty. Stripped of his naval appointment, Aubrey is also nearly penniless and faces an...