Blue at the Mizzen (Aubrey-Maturin Series #20)

"The old master has us again in the palm of his hand."—Los Angeles Times (a Best Book of 1999)

Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and the ensuing peace brings with it both the desertion of nearly half of Captain Aubrey's crew and the sudden dimming of Aubrey's career prospects in a peacetime navy. When the Surprise is nearly sunk on her way to South America—where Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are to help Chile assert her independence from Spain—the delay occasioned by repairs reaps a harve...