Patrick O'Brian · 1992 · sea

The fifteenth and shortest novel, published in Britain as Clarissa Oakes and in America as The Truelove, takes the Surprise out of New South Wales and into the wide Pacific. A stowaway is found aboard, a former convict whose presence stirs strange tensions through the ship. This route follows the Surprise eastward across the Coral Sea and over the date line to the Polynesian island of Moahu, caught in a civil war that draws Jack and Stephen into its bloody politics.

1. 1
   New South Wales

   The Surprise sails from New South Wales bound out into the Pacific, glad to leave the grim convict shore behind. Scarcely at sea, a stowaway is discovered: Clarissa Oakes, a young woman escaped from the colony, whose quiet presence among a crew of women-starved sailors sets up currents of jealousy and unease that trouble the whole voyage.

2. 2
   The South Pacific

   Eastward across the Coral Sea and out into the immense blue emptiness of the South Pacific the Surprise runs before the trade winds, past the reefs and scattered islands. Aboard, the human weather is as unsettled as the sea is fair, with Jack and Stephen themselves drawn into the tensions the stowaway has loosed.

3. 3
   Moahu

   At the Polynesian island of Moahu, far over the date line, the Surprise sails into a civil war between rival chiefs, with French interests at work behind one of them. Jack is drawn into the fighting ashore and afloat to settle the island in Britain's favour, in one of the more violent and strange of all their Pacific adventures.