The Far Side of the World

The Far Side of the World is a naval historical novel by the English writer Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1984. It is the tenth book of the Aubrey-Maturin series, and the events of the story take place during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812.

The novel opens with several threads being tied off. Maturin's work identifying French agents has produced results, though the most senior of them is still at large, and Aubrey's ship has come through a trap that caught a different vessel. In Gibraltar he receives his next orders, which send him round the Horn for the first time to look after the British whalers working the Pacific.

What follows is a long passage and a chase. Maturin continues to work in the dark, sending a letter to his wife by a route he believes to be safe and does not check, and Aubrey has to keep a ship at sea for months on end, with the weather of two oceans, the politics of a war that has just widened, and the ordinary frictions of a crew to manage. The novel is one of the series' most sustained pieces of seamanship.