Patrick O'Brian · 1978 · survival

The fifth and most harrowing of the early novels sends Jack to the far southern ocean. Ordered to carry convicts to Australia in the worn-out Leopard, he sails into gaol-fever, a relentless chase by a Dutch ship of the line, and the cruel weather of the Roaring Forties. This route follows the Leopard from England down through the Atlantic and into the screaming southern latitudes, where after a deadly battle and a collision with an iceberg the crippled ship limps at last to the bleak refuge of the Kerguelen Islands.

1. 1
   England

   Jack is given the elderly fourth-rate Leopard and the unwelcome duty of carrying convicts to New South Wales, among them a beautiful and dangerous American agent, Louisa Wogan, whom Maturin is quietly tasked to use. The ship sails crowded, ill-found and already carrying the seeds of disaster below decks.

2. 2
   Bay of Biscay

   Scarcely clear of England, the Leopard runs into a tremendous gale in the Bay of Biscay and barely survives, and worse follows as gaol-fever breaks out among the convicts and crew and begins to kill by the dozen. The voyage south becomes a grim struggle simply to keep the ship alive.

3. 3
   South Atlantic

   Far out in the South Atlantic the Leopard is sighted and pursued by the Waakzaamheid, a Dutch seventy-four far more powerful than herself. For days the two ships run southward in a deadly chase, the heavier enemy slowly gaining, until Jack turns at bay in the high seas of the south.

4. 4
   Roaring Forties

   In the mountainous waves and shrieking wind of the Roaring Forties the long chase ends, the Waakzaamheid suddenly broaching and foundering with all hands, a scene of terrible grandeur. But the Leopard's ordeal is not over, for in those same wild latitudes she strikes a half-submerged iceberg and is all but lost.

5. 5
   Kerguelen

   Crippled and leaking, the Leopard limps to the Kerguelen Islands, the desolate volcanic refuge in the southern ocean that sailors called Desolation Island. There, in the cold and the emptiness, the arrival of an American whaler offers a slender chance of saving the ship, while Maturin completes his own secret and poisonous errand.