Around the Horn

Harper Collins editions

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:02:25 GMT

I will be mad with it soon.
I keep getting wrong books, wrong editions actually.
My favorite cover picture is this series http://browseinside.harpercollins.co.uk/index.aspx?isbn13=9780006499152 Harper Collins 2003 (I guess). For some bloody reason I keep getting 1997 or something. Damn.

Ideas from Killick

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:17:27 GMT

There are given:

three chicken breasts,
five slices of pork,
4 medium-sized squashes,
3 carrots,
part of cabbage + part of some green salad,
onions,
beans,
around 5lbs of oranges,
2.5 lbs of apples,
3 limes,
rice (some),
coffee,
dried see-weeds,
2 potatoes,
a pack of baby-carrots,
3 inedible tomatoes, which can be heated,
some sauce of oil and ginger,
spices+vinegar+oil.

The task: to cook something in next two days in order to survive on it next ten days in a fashion - come-to-fridge-have-something-put-something-in-a-box-to-take-with-you. The restriction is to make it as tasteful as possible.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:50:52 GMT

Today is birthday of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

La terre nous en apprend plus long sur nous que les livres. Parce qu'elle nous résiste. L'homme se découvre quand il se mesure avec l'obstacle. Mais, pour l'atteindre, il lui faut un outil. Il lui faut un rabot, ou une charrue. Le paysan, dans son labour, arrache peu à peu quelques secrets à la nature, et la vérité qu'il dégage est universelle. De même l'avion, l'outil des lignes aériennes, mêle l’homme à tous les vieux problèmes.
Terre des Hommes

Alive, amazed and trying to fulfill old promises.

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:49:46 GMT

Oh, dear! It was long ago since I've posted here for the last time. I finished The Reverse of the Medal (oh, dear) and now I am somewhere in the middle of The Letter of Marque (dear-dear Stephen). I was browsing my diary lately, in hope to find some hint of when a certain event took place, ha-ha, like hell. All I manged to find is that, Houzzay-houzzay-Jack-is-made-post, oh-dear-what's-gonna-be-with-Stephen, I-am-on-deck-of-dear-Surprise, hey-I-love-O'Brian, O'Brian?, indeed, and-Jack-is-my-everything. And that sort of stuff for half a year!

It was a long time ago when I promised to esteven to post the photo of my model of Gotho Predestinacia, which is the first frigate of Peter The Great. Which I now do. I can't say, that the picture is somewhat near satisfactory, but I promise to post something better as soon as I manage to shoot her. :D

Happy Birthday, dear Esteven!

Thu, 22 May 2008 10:45:40 GMT

Very-very Happy Birthday, dear esteven!!! Wish you joy and fun!! :D

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Mon, 19 May 2008 19:32:07 GMT

You do not inherit the earth of your ancestors, you borrow it from your children.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Mr Midshipman Aubrey

Tue, 13 May 2008 20:54:50 GMT

It was December, 12. (Coming home I understood the magic meaning of the date! :D) I was conducting a lesson, and asked if there was anyone who desires to go to the blackboard to solve the math problem. No one did, thus I pointed randomly on the guy from the first row, who was perusing something in his notebook. "Well, you'll go then..." He lifts his head and amazed I am to gaze directly into young Jack Aubrey's eyes. Grey-blue eyes. Their owner had a yellow ponytail, rather long and rather greasy. Tall and rather good-looking fellow in his seventeens. The rest of the lesson I spent with foolish smile on my lips and the guy near the blackboard (he volunteered all by himself, honestly!)

TEN BOOKS TO AN ISLAND

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:06:35 GMT

Jack's huge fan I am. But sometimes I have definite Stephenish features. And I even cherish them. Some of them. Occasionally. Well, fits of misanthropy are not seldom. And in this case I wish to find myself castaway on faraway island to hear not from anyone about anything. But packing things to an island is laborious business, yeah, very serious business indeed. And with what am I to start the process, thinks I. Hmm, I dunno how about you, I am gonna start with the books.

TEN BOOKS TO AN ISLAND
1. Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin series
2. Joseph Conrad "The Mirror of the Sea"
3. Richard Aldington "All Men Are Enemies"
4. Karen Blixen (Isac Dinesen) "Out of Africa"
5. Antoine de Saint-Exupery "Wind, Sand and Stars" ("Terre des Hommes")
6. JRR Tolkien "The Lord of the Rings"
7. Douglas Adams "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy " (complete guide, all six volumes)
8. Jules Verne "The Mysterious Island" ("L’île mysterieuse")
9. N.S.Gumilev Collected Poems
10. Doncho and Julia Papazovi "With "Ju" across Pacific"

Now I am content!

The Far Side of the World

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:23:43 GMT

Yahooooooo! I've found them. They sorted themselves in some peculiar way indeed. But the stuff from the first chapter is gone anyway. So here they are. I am very lavish with the quotations, btw :D

And who can tell me what the joke of Molter Vivace is all about?

Ch2

Jack to Stephen:
...although I can teach them navigation when things are quiet and beat them whenever they need it, it seems a poor shabby thing to send them out into the world without a notion of history or French or hic haec hoc. Seamanship is a very fine thing, but it is not the only quality, particularly by land, and I have often felt my own want of education - I have often envied those fellows who can dash off an official letter that reads handsome and rattle away in French and throw out quotations in Latin or even God help us in Greek - fellows who know who Demosthenes was, and John o' Groats. You can cut me down directly with a Latin tag. And it is no good telling an ordinary healthy boy to sit down with his Gregory's Polite Education or Robinson's Abridgment of Ancient History: without he is a phoenix like St Vincent or Collingwood he needs a schoolmaster to keep him to it.

At an earlier age, when he accepted any challenge going and some that were not going at all, he would have crossed over to find out...

Mrs Homer's presence was perfectly in accordance with the customs of the service, though her shape was not…

From his boyhood Jack had been an open, friendly creature, expecting to like and to be liked, and although he was by no means forward or over-confident he was not at all given to shyness...

'They love zeal in Whitehall, ' observed Jack, 'particularly when it don't cost them anything.

Stephen: 'You do not anticipate any inconvenience from there being two first lieutenants?'
'I should, in any other ship and with any other men; but Pullings and Mowett have sailed together since they were youngsters - they are very close friends. They arranged it between themselves.'
'I believe I have heard the first lieutenant spoken of as one who is wedded to his ship; so this will be an example of polyandry.'

He raised his bow, beat the deck three times with his foot, and at the third they dashed away into their often-played yet ever-fresh Corelli in C major.

Jack had been deceived by many a land-shark in his time, and parted from his perilously hard-earned prize-money with pitiful ease; but in matters to do with the sea he was much more wary and now he gave the Admiral's look of smiling good will no credit whatsoever.

Captain Pullings:They both of them [Stephen and Martin] came racing along the quay an hour ago, gasping and covered with dust and calling out to us not to pluck up the anchor, nor to spread the sails abroad, because they were there. They are below, now, lying in hammocks on the orlop and drinking white wine and seltzer-water. It seems they did not quite understand your message.

Ch3

Jack had been at sea long enough to know that the only thing about it he could rely upon was its total unreliability.

Jack Aubrey, a Tory, a man who liked old ways and old wine, one of the comparatively few officers of his seniority who still wore his hair long, clubbed at the back of his neck, and his cocked hat athwartships in the Nelson manner rather than fore and aft, was the last to fly in the face of tradition. [dinner in the cabin]

…nearly all the men there had been brought up to a very hard service; they had endured the extremes of heat and cold, wet and dry, shipwreck, wounds, hunger and thirst, the fury of the elements and the malice of the King's enemies; they had borne all that and they could bear this [lobscouse]…

Mrs Homer got up their shirts for ceremonial occasions such as dining in the cabin better than Killick: he suspected her of using fresh water.

An ocean too smooth for Captain Aubrey's liking. He would have preferred two or three almighty northern blows early in the voyage - blows of a violence just short of carrying away any important spars, of course - and this for many reasons: first, because although he had at least a month and more, probably something like six weeks in hand, he would have liked even more, being persuaded that you could never have too much time in hand at sea; secondly, because of his simple-minded love of foul weather, of the roaring wind, the monstrous seas, and the ship racing through them with only a scrap of close-reefed storm-canvas; and thirdly because a thundering great blow with topmasts struck down on deck and lifelines rigged fore and aft, lasting two or three days, was almost as good as an action for pulling a heterogeneous crew together.

Ch3
I was not going to post all the following episode, but then decided to do this

The Indiamen were seen quite early in the morning while Jack was in the pure green sea, with nothing below him for a thousand fathoms and nothing on either hand but the African shore some hundreds of miles away on the left and the far remoter Americas on the right. He swam and dived, swam and dived, delighting in the coolness and the living run of water along his naked body and through his long streaming hair; he felt extremely well, aware of his strength and taking joy in it. And for this brief spell while he was not in the ship he did not have to think about the innumerable problems to do with her people, her hull, rigging and progress, and the wisest course for her to take, problems that perpetually waited on his mind aboard; he loved the Surprise more than any ship he had known, but even so half an hour's holiday from her had a certain charm. 'Come on, ' he called to Stephen, standing on the cathead, looking pinched and mean. 'The water is like champagne.'
    'You always say that, ' muttered Stephen.
    'Go on, sir, ' said Calamy. 'It's soon over. You will like it once you are in.'
    Stephen crossed himself, drew a deep breath, grasped his nose with one hand, blocked an ear with the other, closed his eyes and leapt, striking the sea with his buttocks. Because of his curious lack of buoyancy he remained under the surface for a considerable time, but he came up eventually and Jack said to him, 'Now the Surprise has no one to direct her worldly or her physical or even her spiritual affairs, ha, ha, ha! ' This was true, for the Surprise's boats were all towing astern so that the heat should not open their seams, and in the last sat Mr Martin: they were on the edge of the Sargasso Sea, and he had already taken up a fine collection of weeds, as well as three sea-horses and seven species of pelagic crab.
    'Sail ho, ' cried the lookout as the far haze cleared with the rising sun. 'On deck, there: a sail two points on the starboard bow . . . two sail. Three sail of ships, topgallants up.'
    'Stephen, ' said Jack, 'I must go back at once. You can reach the boats, can you not?' They had been swimming (if that was the word for Stephen's laborious, jerking progress, mostly just under the surface) away from the ship, and with her easy motion added to theirs something in the nature of twenty-five or even thirty yards now separated the Captain from his command, a distance not far from Stephen's limit.
    'Oh, ' said he, but a ripple filled his mouth. He coughed, swallowed more, submerged and began to drown. As usual Jack dived under him, seized his sparse hair and drew him up to the surface; and as usual Stephen folded his hands, closed his eyes, and let himself be towed, floating on his back. Jack abandoned him at Martin's boat, swam fast to the stern-ladder, ran straight up the side and so, pausing only for his shoes, to the masthead. After a moment he called for a glass and confirmed his first impression that they were homeward-bound Indiamen; then, hearing the shrill metallic voice of Mrs Sergeant James, he called for his breeches to be sent into the maintop.

Jack's views on humidity did not prevent him from drinking up his whole private store of East India pale ale...

What a shame on Stephen to call the ship (the dearest Surprise!!!) it!!!
Jack: 'So long as this charming zephyr lasts, I must sail the ship: I must stay on deck.'
    'Sure it will sail whether you are on deck or not: you have capable officers, for all love, and they must sit up in any case, their watches coming in due succession.'
    'That is eminently true, ' said Jack. 'But in a near-run thing it is a captain's duty to be on deck, urging his ship through the water by the combined effort of his will and his belly-muscles: you may say it is buying a dog and barking at the stable door yourself -'
    'The stable door after it is locked, ' said Stephen, holding up his hand.
    'Just so: the stable door after it is locked, yourself. But there are more things than heaven and earth, you know.'

And this one.....I love the description, and the pace of the describtion

    On deck Captain Aubrey, eating a piece of cold or at least luke-warm pease pudding with one hand and holding on to the aftermost maintopgallant standing backstay with the other, did indeed urge his ship on with contractions of his belly-muscles and a continuous effort of his will; but he also did a great deal more than that. It was quite true that he had competent officers, and Pullings and Mowett in particular knew the dear frigate very well; yet he had known her longer by far - his initials on her foretopmast-cap had been carved there when he was an unruly mastheaded boy - and not to put too fine a point on it, he sailed her better.
    He might almost have been riding a high-mettled horse whose moods and paces were as familiar to him as his own, for although he never hauled on a rope nor laid a hand on the wheel (except now and then, to feel the vibration of her rudder and the precise degree of its bite) he had a highly responsive crew, men with whom he had sailed the ship in pursuit of splendid prizes or in flight from hopelessly superior force, and through them he was in the closest touch with her. He had long since abandoned the cautious show of canvas, the snugging-down with reefed topsails of the early days of the voyage, and now the Surprise ran through the night with studdingsails aloft and alow as long as they would stand.
<….>
    He was still there at dawn, taking advantage of every heave of the ocean or thrust of the wind to drive the ship a little farther, a little faster. The breeze had veered southerly and at this point the Surprise was as close-hauled as she could be, her weather-leeches shaking; it grew much stronger with the rising sun, and now she really showed what she could do on a bowline - her lee forechains under the splendid foam of her bow-wave, a white line racing down her side in a curve so deep that her copper showed amidships, and a broad wake that fled out straight behind her, a sea-mile every five minutes. With the idlers called and both watches on deck he packed them along the weather rail to make her stiffer still, set his mainroyal and stood there, braced against the slope of the deck, soaked with flying spray, his face drawn and covered with the bright yellow bristles of unshaven beard, looking perfectly delighted.
    He was still there at noon, when the breeze, somewhat more moderate but now blowing with beautiful steadiness from the east-south-east, had declared itself to be the true trade wind; and with infinite satisfaction he, the master and all the other officers found, when the sun crossed the meridian, that between this observation and the last the Surprise had covered 192 miles, running clean out of the zone of calms and variables.
    After an early dinner he spent the afternoon in his cot, lying on his back and snoring with such a volume and persistence that men as far forward as the belfry winked at one another, grinning, and Mrs Lamb, speaking in a low voice and shaking her head, told the wife of the sergeant of Marines that she pitied poor Mrs Aubrey from the bottom of her heart.

Yet both he [Pullings] and Mowett had been brought up from boyhood in a service that did not encourage the questioning of orders.

'He that would make a pun would pick a pocket, ' said Stephen

Stephen:'Harsh words, ["Oh you wicked mutinous dogs, sons of everlasting whores"] sure: but God love you, they would bear infinitely harsher from Mr Aubrey and still give no more than a tolerant smile and a droll wag of their head. He is one of the most resolute of fighting captains, and that is a quality they prize above anything. They would still value him extremely if he were severe unjust tyrannical sombre revengeful malice-bearing; and he is none of these things.'
'Certainly not: a most gentlemanlike, estimable character indeed, ' said Martin.

And now Stephen and Martin are entering fabulous O'Brian's non-marine picture of Amasonian forest...

It is raining here now, and the harsh wind has been blowing all the day. And I've been wondering all the time what orders Jack would have given for sails for Surprise at sea.

Those bugs, they don't make me smile...

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:14:43 GMT

Oh, no! Oh, no! I decided to post the first part of the quotes from The Far Side of the World as I have enormous quantities of them. And then imagine my frustration when I open my lit-file only to find out that in the beginning all the bookmarks were deleted for some infernal reason!! Oh, where is my list of swearing from Aubreyad, is it gone as well?!

Treason's Harbour - The End

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:28:34 GMT

I finished the Treason's Harbour holding my breath, jumping from line to line, laughing, gasping... But what else is to be expected from O'Brian's book? Lovely twists of the plot, the intrigue is to remain (well, it always does), lively mix of sadness and fun, of reflections and action. But. There are to many words from me. Voila the Master.

The way the problem is posed:

They [duels] seemed to him foolish and even wicked: he had not the least wish to make Laura a widow, even less to do the same to Sophie.

Enjoy this one:

Calamy came forward in a clean frilled shirt with his hair brushed smooth and said 'Why, sir, what's all this? Surely you have not forgot you are entertaining the Captain?'
'And how am I supposed to entertain the Captain, for all love?' asked Stephen. 'Am I to grin at him through a horse-collar, propose riddles and conundrums, cut capers?'
'Come, sir, ' said Calamy, 'the gunroom is entertaining the Captain to dinner, and you have only ten minutes to change. There is not a moment to be lost.' And as he led Stephen aft, 'I am coming too. Ain't that fun?'

He [Jack] missed Pullings extremely, and when he looked at the rows of faces that he knew so well, liked and esteemed - looked with the knowledge that this society would be broken up in the next few weeks - he had a strong sense of his life being upon the turn, between two seasons, as it were, with the certainties of the one no longer valid for the other. He was not a fanciful man, but for some time now he had had an indefinable sense of chaos following order, of impending disaster; and it oppressed his mind.
By way of comfort he observed that the life of the service was one of continual separation, one in which ships' companies continually broke up. They would serve a commission together for better for worse, and then the ship would pay off and they would be separated: to be sure, if the captain were given another command right away he might take several of his officers, his midshipmen and followers; yet very often there was a general parting, and this would be just another of the many he had known, different in degree, since he liked his ship and his shipmates more, but not in kind.

…after a while he [Stephen] cried 'That is not the Dryad. It has three masts.'
'There is no concealing anything from the Doctor, " said Jack, and turning directly to him he went on, 'Give you joy of our prize: we took her in the night.'

I particularly love the construction of the sentence, how it tastes on the lips, though I have only vague idea why

Every evening of her life under Captain Aubrey's command the Surprise had cleared for action, had cleared in the fullest sense of the term, as if she were really going into battle, with the bulkheads of his cabins vanishing, the great guns in them being run out, and all his belongings hurrying below.

And this one for the sense and mood it provides so effortlessly

In fact the Surprise never made a single clean sweep fore and aft in the six days of her voyage to Zambra, six days of the sweetest sailing that Jack had ever known.... These six days, with mild warm prosperous breezes, a gentle sea, and... none of that harassing sense of urgency which marred so many naval journeys - these six days might have been taken out of ordinary time, might not have belonged to the common calendar: it was not exactly holiday, for there was plenty to do; but for once the Surprises did have a moment, even a fair number of moments, to lose; though this was not the only factor by any means nor yet the main one.

ha-ha
…to hear the bosun cry 'Oh you . . . unskilful fellow'

and it occurred to Stephen that a really handsome, thoroughly good-natured but totally inaccessible young woman, changed at stated intervals, before familiarity could set in, would be a very valuable addition to any man-of-war's establishment.

…the dreamlike quality of these last few days. An exquisite gentle dream in spite of its strong sense of 'last time' and even of doom, he reflected, as the barge took him back; but he could find no way of expressing its nature in words. Music would come nearer: he could more nearly define it with a fiddle under his chin, define it at least to his own satisfaction. With the lovely but menacing slow movement of a partita that he sometimes played running through his head he gazed at the Surprise. She was as familiar to him as a ship could well be, but because of this train of reflection, or because of some trick of the light, or because it was really so, her nature too had changed; she was a ship in a dream, a ship he hardly knew, and she was sailing along a course long since traced out, as straight and narrow as a razor's edge.

Stephen said to him 'If the woman does not issue a more Christian invitation in two minutes, I shall drink that, ' - pointing to the gunroom's coffee, weak, insipid, only just luke-warm. 'She has asked us to take chocolate with her. Chocolate at this time in the morning, dear Mother of God. Suff on her.'

He went ashore with the first boat of empty casks, and for the first time that morning he found himself in touch with that feeling of another and as it were parallel world again, the feeling that had been with him so strongly these last few days. It was the extraordinary familiarity of the watering-place that brought it back. He had not been there for nearly twenty very active years and yet he knew every stone of its ancient worn coping and even the exact scent of freshness and green as he leant over the basin.

He shied away and steered close-hauled for the western shore, once again pushing the Surprise as hard as ever she could go. Never had he felt so much one with his ship. In the somewhat lighter wind at the bottom of the bay she could wear a prodigious amount of canvas; he knew exactly how much she could stand and he gave it her; and she behaved like a thoroughbred, drawing well away from the big Frenchman…

He was standing firmly planted by the taffrail with his legs wide apart, swinging his telescope from one end of the bay to the other. The first savage blaze of triumph had faded, but his eye still had a fine piratical gleam in it as he turned the possibilities over in his mind.

Killick: 'The lady's cabin is set to rights, sir, if you please; and I have made a pot of coffee."
No one had ever set the cabin to rights in so short a time for Jack, nor had anyone produced a pot of coffee…

*sighs* I do love the books. I do. And I am happy today.

Treason's Harbour - Part Three

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 19:42:45 GMT

Up to the middle of chapter 9, I guess..

Ch7

Stephen: But there is a tedious and I fear increasingly powerful sentiment that when something exceptionally arduous and disagreeable is to be done, like walking over a hot, shadowless desert, then all hands must share alike, ton for ton and man for man.

…by day the vast expanse of desert, perfectly level in every direction, offered no shelter for those who wished to relieve themselves; and as several of the Surprises, including their captain, were as shamefast and bashful in their actions as they were licentious in their speech, this led to a great loss of time as men hurried off so that distance, often very great distance, should preserve their modesty

Ch8

Jack after he learned that the Surprise is to be sold out of the service:

…but when he was being rowed back across the harbour sorrow for his ship welled up and nearly choked him. He had served in her as a midshipman and he had commanded her in the Indian Ocean, a difficult and temperamental little frigate, but wonderfully responsive, fast and mettlesome for those who knew her ways; she had never failed him in an emergency, and he would never know a more sea-kindly ship, by or large, in light airs or in a strong gale. The idea of her rotting away in some foul creek and then being broken up or sold out of the service to be cut down into a creeping merchantman was more than he could bear. If that galley had been what it seemed, he would have bought her himself, to preserve her from such a fate: he had known ships, particularly enemies' ships, sold for no great sum if they were not wanted for the Navy.
Nor was it likely that he should ever command such a crew again, a crew of hand-picked seamen, every one of whom could hand, reef and steer, and practically every one of whom he knew and liked as a man. He knew exactly where he was with the Surprises and they knew exactly where they were with him and his officers; the Surprises could be allowed liberties unheard-of in a ship with a mixed set of people, including landsmen and thieves as well as a large proportion of sullen, understandably resentful pressed men, a ship's company that needed the perpetual tight discipline usual in the service, the repetitive drilling in reefing, furling, shifting topmasts, hoisting out boats and so on, all adapted to the capacities of the least endowed, the hard driving, and almost inevitably the hard punishment. Jack Aubrey was a taut captain, but he had never shared the zeal for punishing that characterized so many officers; he loathed flogging; he could never with a clear conscience order it for faults he had committed at times himself, and although the traditions of the service being what they were he had in fact ordered many a round dozen in his time he found it a great relief not to have to do so, a great relief not to be righteously indignant and perpetually holier than everyone else in the ship. There had scarcely been a flogging aboard the Surprise since he took her over; and if only her people had included a somewhat more amiable, less uncouth captain's steward, a captain's cook with more than two puddings at his command, a couple of officers who could play well enough for Stephen and him to have an occasional quartet, and a stronger midshipmen's berth, he would have said that before Pullings was promoted and before so many of the hands were drafted away, the frigate had had the finest ship's company in the squadron, if not in the entire service.
'I shall not tell them until I am forced to it; ' he thought

All this [bringing the Surprise in order at Malta] was fine, satisfying, seamanlike work - as he told the exhausted midshipmen, it gave them a deeper insight into the nature of a man-of-war than months or even years of simple sailing - and he was at last able to do many of the things that he had always intended to do…

Ch9

Stephen in his letter:

'Jack Aubrey has faults and to spare, the Dear knows: he thinks a sailor's highest aim is to carry his ship from A to B in the shortest possible time, losing not a minute, so that life is a kind of perpetually harassing race, and only yesterday he was doggedly, mechanically stubborn in his refusal to turn a little way aside so that we might view Ithaca.

This passage is magnificent. This rear insight into Jack's deep feelings, when he indeed happens to be deep file as he is, and not just a mild, amiable, not always very wise companion whom he can appear from the first glance. And what is heartbreaking is his feeling for his ship - his bigger than life love, his blood indeed, part of himself.

He was eating his dinner not in the dining-cabin but right aft, sitting with his face to the great stern-window, so that on the far side of the glass and a biscuit-toss below the frigate's wake streamed away and away from him, dead white in the troubled green, so white that the gulls, poising and swooping over it, looked quite dingy. This was a sight that never failed to move him: the noble curve of shining panes, wholly unlike any landborne window, and then the sea in some one of its infinity of aspects; and the whole in silence, entirely to himself. If he spent the rest of his life on half-pay in a debtors' prison he would still have had this, he reflected, eating the last of the Cephalonian cheese; and it was something over and above any reward he could possibly have contracted for.

Jack remembering his passing for lieutenant:

Once again he saw the stony magnificence of Somerset House on that first Wednesday in the month, the vast round hall with thirty or forty long-legged gawky youths clutching their certificates, each with a troupe of relatives, sometimes very imposing and nearly always hostile towards the other candidates: the porter calling their names two by two: the climbing of the stairs, one being admitted while the other waited by the white circular railing, straining his ears to hear the questions: the tears on the face of the boy who came out as he went in.

esteven, I remember your voyage and your photos at once! :D

Treason's Harbour - Part Two (up to Ch7)

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:52:48 GMT

I've read up to Ch 7 of Treason's Harbour, and at the end of Ch 6 was terrified to find out that the events of the first chapter are somewhat blurred in my mind. That damned RL happens to take to much of my attention already, then what am I to expect next?!

Anyway,...

…the prospect of decisive action seemed to make Jack grow in height and breadth; and it certainly gave him a different expression, more detached, remote, and self-contained. He was a big man in any case - one perfectly capable of carrying off a diamond spray in his hat without the least difficulty - and with this increase in moral size he became a more imposing figure by far, even to those who knew him intimately well as a mild, amiable, not always very wise companion. - ha-ha!!

It seemed to him that his reputation in the service (and with himself as one who watched Jack Aubrey's doings from a certain distance and with an almost perfect knowledge of his motives) was based on two or three fortunate actions, sea-fights that he could look back upon with real pleasure, small though they were; but they belonged to the past; they had all happened long ago; and now there were several men who stood far higher in the esteem of those whose opinion he valued. ...It was as though he were running a race: a race in which he had done fairly well for a while, after a slow start, but one in which he could not hold his lead and was being overtaken, perhaps from lack of bottom, perhaps from lack of judgment, perhaps from lack of that particularly nameless quality that brought some men success when it just eluded others, though they might take equal pains. He could not put his finger on the fault with any certainty, and there were days when he could say with real conviction that the whole thing was mere fatality, the other side of the good luck that had attended him in his twenties and early thirties, the restoration of the average. But there were other days when he felt that his profound uneasiness was an undeniable proof of the fault's existence, and that although he himself might not be able to name it, it was clear enough to others, particularly those in power: at all events they had given many of the good appointments to other men, not to him.

HEEEE!
    'Have you ever known a heat like this, Stephen?'
   'I have not, ' said Stephen.
   'Nelson once said he did not need a greatcoat - love for his country kept him warm. I wonder whether it would have kept him cool, had he been here? I'm sure it has no effect on me: I drip like Purvis's distilling machine.'
   'Perhaps you do not love your country quite enough.'
   'Who could, with the income-tax at two shillings in the pound, and captains docked an eighth of their prize-money?'

…he took seamanship for granted in those who belonged to the Navy, abhorring its absence as extremely discreditable if not downright… wicked and praising only its highest flights

I love passionately through all the books those episodes that picture Jack in the moments of driving his ship, whatever ship is in command of. In these moments he is one to one with her, and it is always very erotic for me.
There were few things that moved him more than driving a ship to the limit of her possibilities in a very strong blow.

And also O'Brian has fantastic talent in describing the moments of decision, which as a matter of fact moves the captain aloof of all the crew.
Jack: 'Lord, the comfort of being under orders, the comfort of being told exactly what to do.'

Something was not quite right. He had deceived too many enemies at sea to be easily misled himself…

Lord, how I laughed! Dear Stephen, what a seaman you are indeed!
'I am very unwilling that they should suppose I am not the complete seaman, ' said Stephen

And I crave for the hard copies - to make bookmarks, to speckle the paper with pencil-notes, and to save my eyesight from pocket PC. *sighs*

~~And I find myself to become more and more Jack-addictive.~~

Spanish Ladies

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:59:20 GMT

which I keep humming under my nose and singing in voice occasionally for last three days ever since I found it in Treason's Harbour . That was delight! People react inadequately in most of the cases - they think me to be inadequate.

Anyway, Jack is somewhere near his landfall and I am inclined to have some fun by copying huge quotes. :)

'Some of my best friends are Englishmen.Yet even the most valuable have this same vicious inclination to make a confused bellowing when they are happy. It is harmless enough in their own country, where the diet deadens the sensibilities, but it travels badly: it is perceived as a superabundancy of arrogance, and is resented more than many worse crimes. The Spaniard is a vile colonist, murderous, rapacious, cruel; but he is not heard to laugh. His arrogance is of a common, universal kind, and his presence is not resented in the same way as the Englishman's. Take the case of this island alone: it is scarcely a decade since the Navy rescued the people from the horrible tyranny of the French and filled the place with wealth rather than carrying away the treasures of the churches by the shipload, but already there is a great and growing discontent and I believe the laughter has much to do with it.

I can't stop myself. I love the passage so very much. It could have turned in anything after all, and I laughed heartily.

He [Jack] had quite recovered his good humour during his walk - it rarely deserted him for long - and now, opening his coat and taking off his hat, he contemplated the lemons in the gathering twilight with the utmost satisfaction, the cool air wafting about him. He had stopped puffing and he was about to take his fiddle out of its case when he took notice of a sound that had been vaguely present for some time but that now seemed to increase, a desperate unearthly wailing, fairly regular.
    'It is scarcely human, ' he said, cocking his ear and trying to think of possible origins - a windmill turning with no tallow on its shaft, a lathe of some kind, a man run melancholy-mad and shut up behind the wall on the left. 'Yet sound is the strangest thing for reverberation, ' he reflected, standing up. Beyond the lemon-tree there stood the little house, and from its right-hand corner ran an elegant flight of arches, screening another courtyard at an angle to the first: he walked through, and at once the sound grew very much louder - it was coming from a broad, deep cistern sunk in the corner to receive rain-water from the roofs.
    'God help us, ' said Jack, running towards it with a vague but very horrible notion of the maniac's having flung himself in out of despair. And when he leant over the edge of the dark water some four or five feet below, the notion seemed to be confirmed ? a dim hairy form was swimming there, straining up its huge lamentable head and uttering a hoarse wow wow wow of extraordinary volume. Another glance, however, showed him that it was Ponto.
    The cistern had been more than half emptied to water the lemon-tree (buckets stood by it still): the wretched dog, impelled by some unknown inquisitiveness and betrayed by some unknown blunder, had fallen in. There was still enough water for him to be out of his depth but enough had been taken to make it impossible for him to reach the rim and heave himself out. He had been in the water a great while, and all round the walls there were the bloody marks of his paws where he had tried to scrabble up. He looked quite mad with terror and despair and at first he took no notice of Jack at all, howling on and on without a pause.
    'If he is out of his wits he will have my hand off, maybe, ' said Jack, having spoken to the dog with no effect. 'I must get hold of his collar: a damned long lean.' He took off his coat and sword and reached down, far down, but not far enough although he felt his breeches complain. He straightened, took off his waistcoat, loosened his neckcloth and the band of his breeches and leant over again, down into the dimness and the howling that filled the air. This time his hand just touched the water: he saw the dog surge across, called out 'Hey there, Ponto, give us your scruff, ' and poised his hand to seize the collar. To his vexation the animal merely swam heavily to the other side, where if. tried to climb the hopeless wall with its flayed, clawless paws, howling steadily.
    'Oh you God-damned fool, ' he cried. 'You silly calf-headed bitch. Give us your scruff: bear a hand now, you infernal bugger.'
    The familiar naval sounds, uttered very loud and echoing in the cistern, pierced through the dog's distress, bringing sense and comfort. He swam over: Jack's hand brushed the hairy head, whipped down to the collar, the damned awkward spiked collar, and took what grip it could. 'Hold fast, ' he said, slipping his fingers farther under. 'Stand by.' He drew breath, and with his left hand gripping the cistern-rim and his right hooked under the collar, the two as far apart as they could be, he heaved. He had the dog half way out of the water - a very great weight with such a poor grip, but just possible - when the edge of the cistern gave way and he fell bodily in. Two thoughts flashed into his plunging mind: 'There go my breeches' and 'I must keep clear of his jaws', and then he was standing on the bottom of the cistern with the water up to his chest and the dog round his neck, its forelegs gripping him in an almost human embrace and its strangled breath in his ear. Strangled, but not demented: Ponto had clearly recovered what wits he possessed. Jack let go the collar, turned the dog about, grasped his middle, and crying 'Away aloft' thrust him up towards the rim. Ponto got his paws on to it, then his chin; Jack gave his rump one last powerful heave and he was gone: the mouth of the cistern overhead was empty, but for the pale sky and three stars.

Mr Midshipman Aubrey presented himself together with many others at Somerset House, furnished with a paper falsely certifying that he was nineteen years of age, and with others from his various captains stating with perfect truth that he had served the requisite six years at sea and that he could hand, reef and steer, work his tides and take double altitudes; and it was Captain Hartley who spoke up when Jack, already so flustered by a malignant hungry ill-tempered mathematical captain that he could hardly tell latitude from longitude, was brought up all standing by the sudden, unfair, and totally unexpected question 'how does it come about that Captain Douglas disrated you, turned you out of the midshipmen's berth and sent you forward to serve as a common foremast-hand when you was in Resolution at the Cape?'
    Jack was horribly puzzled to find an answer that should make him seem reasonably innocent while at the same time it did not reflect upon his then commanding officer; he called upon his intelligence (for his usual candour did not seem appropriate on this occasion) and upon all the subtlety he possessed, but he called in vain, and he was infinitely relieved to hear Captain Hartley say 'Oh, it was only a question of a girl hidden in the cable-tier, nothing to do with his seamanship at all: Douglas told me when I took him on to my own quarterdeck. Now, Mr Aubrey, let us suppose you are in command of a transport: she is in ballast, light and crank, heading south under topgallantsails, the breeze due west, and a sudden squall lays her on her beam-ends. How do you deal with the situation without cutting away her masts?'
    Mr Aubrey dealt with the situation by veering away a good scope of hawser, made fast to water-stops such as spars and hen-coops, from the lee quarter and then hauling upon it until the ship wore, with a last hearty heave by all hands to bring the wind on to what had been her lee quarter, when she must infallibly right herself and save her hawser too.

Ha-ha
Since Jack Aubrey had never deliberately and with malice aforethought seduced any woman in his life, his was not a regular siege of her heart, with formal lines of approach, saps and covered ways; his only strategy (if anything so wholly instinctive and unpremeditated deserved such a name) was to smile very much, to be as agreeable as he could, and to move his chair closer and closer.

And for this (apart of his passion for natural history) I can say, I love Stephen...
In his time he had advocated the serving out of a modest allowance of soap, the cutting of the monstrous rum-ration, the provision of free, warm, serviceable uniform clothes for the lower deck, particularly for the ship's boys and new hands, and the abolition of such punishments as flogging round the fleet: these proposals had met with little more success than his present suggestion that in defiance of all tradition the Navy should look where it was going .

...but Jack I love passionately indeed, with all my heart and soul
Jack, whose dead reckoning and observations agreed closely with Allen's, confidently expected that they should make their landfall that forenoon: he had quite ceased urging the ship on by a continual effort of will and an unreasonable contraction of his stomach muscles, and now, as he disposed himself to listen to Mr Martin, he was aware of a fine bubbling excitement in the background of his mind, very much like that of his much younger days.

Naval Warfare Encyclopedia

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:41:23 GMT

Can't help sharing wonderful stuff, I've found on http://englishtps.org
Naval Warfare Encyclopedia

The password for the archive is englishtips.org

The Ionian Mission

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:14:38 GMT

I haven't finished The Ionian Mission yet, but have some few spare minutes and am overflown with desire to remember some stuff.

and since the seamen delighted in deception, above all any deception intended to blear the port-admiral's eye, he was afraid they might overact their parts. It was a ticklish business, managing this tacit connivance at disobeying a direct order while at the same time maintaining his reputation as an efficient officer, and perhaps there was a little too much brisk running about to be quite convincing

As far as real battlefields and beds of roses were concerned, Captain Aubrey was far better acquainted with the first, partly because of his profession, which, with enormous intervals of delay, often cold and always wet, brought him into violent conflict with the King's enemies, to say nothing of the Admiralty, the Navy Board, and bloody-minded superiors and subordinates, and partly because he was a wretched gardener.

Mr Pullings, a bosun's chair, if you please, a whip for the dunnage, and pass the word for the children.' The cry ran through the ship 'Children aft - children report to the Captain - all children aft' and Jack's two little girls came running from the galley, grasping massy half-eaten slabs of cold plum-duff, followed by George, their younger brother, in his first pair of pantaloons, carried by a hairy quartermaster. But George's full-moon face was anxious and preoccupied; he whispered into the seaman's hairy ear. 'Can't you wait?' asked the seaman. George shook his head: the seaman whipped off the pantaloons, held the little boy well out over the leeward rail and called for a handful of tow.
Dear George!

' Do away with subordination and you do away with tyranny: without subordination we should have no Neros, no Tamerlanes, no Buonapartes.
    'Stuff, ' said Jack. 'Subordination is the natural order: there is subordination in Heaven - Thrones and Dominions take precedence over Powers and Principalities, Archangels and ordinary foremast angels; and so it is in the Navy. You have come to the wrong shop for anarchy, brother.'
I found this!!!

We searched through the papers - such a disorder you would hardly credit, and I had always supposed publishers were as neat as bees - we searched for hours, and no uncle's pieces did we find. But the whole point is this: Bach had a father.'
    'Heavens, Jack, what things you tell me. Yet upon recollection I seem to have known other men in much the same case.'
Does he indeed? Strange.

Dear Killick
'There they go again, tweedly-deedly, tweedly-deedly, belly-aching the whole bleeding night, and the toasted cheese seizing on to their plates like goddam glue, which I dursen't go in to fetch them; and never an honest tune from beginning to end.'

Jack Aubrey's mind was too taken up with the delicate calculations of the coming battle for conversation: he stood there, wholly engrossed, working out the converging courses, the possible variants, the innumerable fine points that must precede the plain hard hammering, when everyone would be much happier. On these occasions, and Stephen had known many of them, Jack was as it were removed, a stranger, quite unlike the cheerful, not over-wise companion he knew so well: a hard, strong face, calm but intensely alive, efficient, decided, a stern face, but one that in some way expressed a fierce and vivid happiness.

I laughed:
By an unhappy chance it so happened that the powder filled for this evening's practice was the kind that gave a blinding white flash and an extraordinarily loud high-pitched bang. At the first discharge Jack clapped his hands tight behind his back to prevent himself from putting them to his head; and long before the last of the additional rounds he regretted his petulance with all his heart. He also regretted clasping his hands so tight, since his childish sliding on the flagship's backstay had scorched them cruelly, and in his sleep the right-hand palm had swelled in a red and angry weal. However, the marksmanship had been unusually good; everybody looked pleased; and with a haggard, artificial grin he said 'A creditable exercise, Mr Pullings. You may beat the retreat.'
    After a barely decent interval while his cabin was being put to rights - for the Worcester was one of the few ships that stripped every evening, a clear sweep fore and aft - he retreated himself.
    The first thing that met his cross-grained nose was the smell of coffee, his favourite drink. 'What is that pot doing here?' he asked in a harsh, suspicious voice. 'You do not imagine that I am in need of coffee at this time of day, do you?'
    'Which the Doctor is coming to look to your hand, ' said Killick with the surly, aggressive, brazen look that always accompanied his lies. 'We got to give him something to whet his whistle, ain't we? Sir, ' he added, as an afterthought.
    'How did you make it? The galley fire has been out this half hour and more.'
    'Spirit-stove, in course. Here he is, sir.'

Jack: but there are two ends to every pudding.'
'I should be the last to deny it, ' said Stephen. 'If a pudding starts, clearly it must end; the human mind is incapable of grasping infinity, and an endless pudding passes our conception.'

he and Jack Aubrey were almost as unlike as men could be, unlike in nationality, religion, education, size, shape, profession, habit of mind, they were united in a deep love of music

and as a matter of fact the whole passage:
So far Jack had been unusually lucky in this respect. From his first command he had nearly always sailed with Stephen Maturin, and it had proved the happiest arrangement. As her surgeon, Dr Maturin was very much part of the ship, having his own independent function and being, one no more than nominally subject to the captain; but since he was not an executive officer their intimacy caused no jealousy or ill-feeling in the wardroom: and although he and Jack Aubrey were almost as unlike as men could be, unlike in nationality, religion, education, size, shape, profession, habit of mind, they were united in a deep love of music, and many and many an evening had they played together, violin answering 'cello or both singing together far into the night.

And I love the episode in port Mahon at the Crown with Stephen making the most unwelcome entrance of his life.

Babbington:
'And here I am, sir, quite happy to be publicly reproached, abused, and amazingly vilified, so long as I am conscious of having done my duty.'
'Well, damme, William, I am sorry: I am very sorry, indeed I am. But injustice is a rule of the service, as you know very well; and since you have to have a good deal of undeserved abuse, you might just as well have it from your friends.'
'Certainly, sir. '

Those bastards

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:59:26 GMT

Yesterday on my way from the room to the bath being occupied with some thoughts about computer and studying I suddenly thought that I had heard the echo of familiar phrase from Dad's TV in the next room. Something about sweethearts. And mad laughter. 'Girl,' I told myself, 'you are going mad.' This was followed with my Dad's question, whether or not the film 'Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World' is worth watching, "they are showing such a shots...". My mad laughter, inner thought of how my Dad comes to forget what I ~~was~~ have been telling him, and wildest praise of the named movie followed the scene. Today, looking up something for my Dad in the magazine with TV-schedule I bumped into the annotation for the named movie. Dear me. It was not funny. It was pathetic. I've learned much new. First of all, dear old Surprise is Her Majesty Ship (God, Save King George). And she (the ship, not majesty) is furrowing the Atlantic Ocean, receiving the orders. By e-mail, no doubt. But poor frenchmen... Acheron, you say? Well, Archeron it was. And this ship is, brace yourself, she is ... a pirate. Piratical French ship. Poor Jack. But here his mischiefs are not to be ended. First of all he must "take the ship as a prisoner", but that damned ship, and now keep your countenance if you can, 'possesses the unique ability to appear from nowhere'. Blimey! "But the order is to be fulfilled and Aubrey makes a decision to chase the enemy to victorious end". God, stop saving King George, save me instead.

I am alive and haven't dissappeared

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:42:44 GMT

and I am still around, but quite panic-stricken glancing at the calendar. A bit invaded by RL, I try to work out how I am to do all what I should do and still to do it in time, as otherwise it will be just impossible to do. I am even still on The Ionian Mission (all the february). Though the latter fact is perhaps not so much due to the stuff I am trying to be occupied with (I read books at any events in my life, as I eat and breath) but due to my sudden discovery of Jane Austen in general and her Pride and Prejudice in particular. :D
Still, I hope I will be able to pop up now and then, so do not forget me entirely. :D

Books

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:26:28 GMT

Marching from point A to point B today I found myself engaged into thoughts of 10 Books To An Island. And I was much perplexed. Ten books there are. And now after some prolonged consideration two of them have been occupied with the books from Aubreyad. And I am only on The Ionian Mission. So perhaps it is mire proper to consider all the Aubreyad as one book, to save the explanation? But it is somewhat cheating a little. You can put as well there the-collected-works-by-dunno-who. But on the other hand it is highly stupid to divide it into 21 books. And besides, and that drives me nuts in case I find myself on an island, I was unable to put all books I had had in mind into that ten, even with two O'Brians...

Jules Verne

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:02:16 GMT

Today's Jules Verne's anniversary. He was born February 8, 1828. So he is 180 years.

My whole childhood and youth passed under the influence of his works and his characters. And every new author, which has been discovered later has been always inevitably compared to Jules Verne. And many of them failed this comparison and were forgotten. To surpass him? No. But I am happy do discover books which are bringing me now that all-absorbing ecstasy of reading Jules Verne in my early years. And that's the highest praise.
His versatile professional engineer Cyrus Smith, captain Pencroff, noble and daring Lord Glenarvan, mysterious and ingenious Captain Nemo, the personification of the real enthralled scientist Jacques Paganel, phlegmatic and persistent Phileas Fogg, his intrepid dashing youths - Robert Grant, Gerbert, Dick Sand they were always a greatest inspirations and models of behavior for me. Jules Verne has everything in his novels, which is dear to my rebellious heart and soul: travels, adventures, praising of science and knowledge and progress, strong characters, enterprising men, sea, far away lands, unknown shores populated with wonderful beasts, the passion of freedom and for freedom. His books were on the edge of his time and the air of vent moderne is sensed as a fresh gale from his pages.

Et moi, ..., si j'avait su comment en revenir, je n'y serais point allé.
Jules Verne

Bon anniversaire, Monsieur Jules Verne! Et merci beaucoup!

It sent such a jet of happiness through my heart that I almost skipped where I stood

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:33:52 GMT

I was so delighted to find suddenly somehow very familiar book... :D
I love books. I love bookstores. Real bookstores. Where you can walk along the bookshelves with your heart jumping from time to time from the view of a Book. Real bookstores, where you can find something. Something lovely, interesting, irresistible. I love the second-hand bookshops, where the smell of the old paper dominates you, bringing the idea of the folios you were looking for all your life, of the volumes which have they own life in them, the story to be read with the one in the pages. I love when the books are in abundance, when they are well-kept and cared, and when you have a feeling that here you can find, definitely find what you wish. It was long ago, when I actually was in such place. My longing soul is feeding on the photographs of the book-paradises. And it always gives joy to recognize the author, the title, the mood....

Let the angle YCB, to which the yard is braced up, be called the trim of the sails

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:58:02 GMT

Reading chapter 2 of Master and Commander one can be perplexed with Captain Aubrey's remembrance of old Queeney's lessons on navigation. This is how it appears in my HarperCollins 2002 paperback edition:
Let the angle YCB, to which the yard is braced up, be called the trim of the sails, and expressed by the symbol b. This is the complement of the angle DCI. Now Cl:ID = rad.:tan. DCI = I:tan. DCI = |: cotan. b. Therefore we have finally |: cotan. b = A':B':tan.2x, and A' cotan. b = B 'angent, and tan. 'x = A'/B' cot. This equation evidently ascertains the mutual relation between the trim of the sails and the leeway.

It is understandable for sure, that we it is morning, and freshly promoted master and commander was roughly extort from his sleep, but still, with appreciation to the Lords of Admiralty who had accepted Jack Aubrey's lieutenant exam years ago one can suspect that the stuff above is somewhat too much rubbish from mere mathematical point of view to be Captain's ('Good morning, sir!') thoughts. And in mandc_read we were perplexed. The question was aroused in omniscient Gunroom. And there thanks to Bill
the original of the text was found in the 1797 Encyclopedia Britannica, the entry for
'Seamanship'. Gary then gave an explanation of what's going on to nonmathematical community.
In our discussion in mandc_read I promised to give detailed explanation of the article.

The only comment before we plunge into navigation is that it is all OK with Jack's memory, and with O'Brian's writing, but someone like the editor or corrector is eating his bread in vain.

The author's aim is to examine the effect on the on the ship's movement of different positions of the yard, i.e. the angles between the yard and the centerline. The ship is considered to be 'an oblong box', with the single mast in the center of it, and with the single yard on the mast. The yard can be braced about in any direction' (i.e. the angle between the yard and the centerline could be any). The sail is considered to be 'flat surface', i.e. plate.
Shortly speaking, what we will be doing is decomposing the force of the wind's effect on the sail on two, the force, which pushes the ship ahead and the force, which pushes her to leeward. And then we will count the magnitude of of the ship deviation from her head direction (her leeway). And the main simplification here is that we consider 'the impulse as the square sine of the inclination' from the line. ('whereas, if we were to introduce the values of oblique impulses, such as they have been observed in the excellent experiments of the Academy of Paris, the constructions would be complicated in the extreme, and we could hardly draw any consequences which would be intelligible to any but expert mathematician')

The easiest way would be to consider the picture directly.

EFGH is the horizontal section of a ship, which is oblong box (it is the rectangle as a matter of fact);
AB is its centerline, the projection of her keel.
Point C is the middle of AB, thus it is the point of intersection of diagonals. At point C the mast is erected.
YC is our yard. CD is orthogonal to YC and vector CD is the vector of the force of wind's effect on the sail, and this vector is decomposed on two , which are considered to be orthogonal as well: vector CI represents the force, which pushes the ship ahead, and vector CK represents the force, which pushes her sideways (to leeward).
Note, that CD is not wind's effect on ship, i.e. it is not the ship's direction, as the resistance of the hull is different ahead and abeam. And fore this we read that 'a fine sailing ship of war will require about 12 times as much force to push her sidewise as to push her head foremost'.
A' and B' are the measures of the ahead and lateral sides of the rectangle EFGH
Line ab represents the real direction of the ship's movement.
So what is the direction ab? It is evident that the impact of the forces CK and CI must depend somehow on the hull of the ship (for given wind), and looking down to the book,the direction ab is 'such that the resistance of the water to the plane FG is to its resistance to the plane EF as CI to CK'. Thus we have the equation, binding the resistances to ahead and lateral motions (see the picture).

Thus the angle bCB between the direction of the head (AB, or the same, CB) and the real course we call Leeway, and denote it as x. (Remember Jack's mids and their perplexed minds.)
'Leeway depends on the shape of the vessel and the position of the yard. An accurate knowledge of the quantity of leeway, corresponding to different circumstances of obliquity of impulse, extent of surface, &c. is one of the utmost importance in the practice of navigation; and even an approximation is valuable.' (Here comes Jack's intuition.)

And now, drum beats! Let the angle YCB, to which the yard is braced up, be called the Trim of the sails...
We will call it b and looking on the picture we see that it indeed is complementary to angle DCI (which means their sum is 90 degrees, or pi upon two).
Now, let us look at the second picture

Note, that by tan. and tangent author means tangent which I denote as tan. (scroll to trigonometry);
by cot. and cotan. the author means cotangent of an angle which is 1 divided by the tangent which I denote as cotan.

The second equality that 1/cotan.b=CI/CK is exactly the definition of the cotangent of angle b.
The last equality in that line follows from the fact that cos(y)/sin(y)=cotan(y)=1/tan(y). See the table.

Thus indeed we see that the emboxed equation indeed shows the relation between the leeway (angle b) and the trim of the sails (angle x).

I decided against the explanation of trigonometric functions, which you can find here.

And, thus the excerpt should look like this:
Let the angle YCB, to which the yard is braced up, be called the trim of the sails, and expressed by the symbol b. This is the complement of the angle DCI. Now Cl:ID = rad.:tan. DCI = 1:tan. DCI = 1: cotan. b. Therefore we have finally 1: cotan. b = A':B':tan.^2 x, and A' cotan. b = B' tangent x, and tan. 'x = A'/B' cot. b. This equation evidently ascertains the mutual relation between the trim of the sails and the leeway.
By ^smth I mean that smth is in upper register (there is tangent in second power.)

Please, express your opinion on this written stuff, and tell me about all the bugs, either in English or in explanations if you find them.

Naval Order and Pregnant Mice

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:05:20 GMT

I am trying hard not to copy all the books as quotes or favourite stuff, or whatever.

S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S

Their daily life, though confined and dull, might have been very much more disagreeable. It quickly assumed an ordered shape: Jack did not exactly organize them into watches, but he showed them how the place could be brought to something like naval cleanliness with nothing but the most primitive means and a mere three sweepings in the course of the day. His pupils were sluggish, inept, reluctant, even sullen at times, and they particularly disliked hanging their blankets and their pallet-beds from Jagiello's window, piling all the sparse furniture into a pyramid, and swilling the floor before breakfast; but his moral force, his conviction that this alone was right, overcame them, and the rooms grew inoffensive at least, so much so that the former prisoner's tame mouse became uneasy and disappeared for three days. It lived behind the locked door in Jack's room and it came out of its hole in time for their first breakfast: though hesitant and confused at finding its friend gone and strangers sitting at the familiar table, it had accepted a piece of croissant and a little coffee held out at arm's length in a spoon; it sat with them while they discussed the methods of dealing with the surrounding filth, and all seemed well until the unfortunate orgy of scrubbing. The mouse did come back in time, however, and Stephen noticed with concern that it was gravid: he ordered cream - cream was eminently medicinal in pregnancy.

I wish I had Jack in my place to bring it to order.
*sighs* *smiles* *leaps to feet and grabs the vacuum-cleaner*

Their entrance into the grim ancient fortress was unlike any that Stephen had ever known. Duhamel had his door open before the carriage stopped, and followed by Jack and Jagiello, who trampled on Stephen and broke his larger bottle in their haste, he ran into the immense vaulted guard-room where those charged with receiving the prisoners sat among scaffolding and pails. With irresistible impetuosity they rushed past the deputy-governor, his secretary, the turnkeys and ran on, pale and earnest, down a dark corridor, Duhamel a good length ahead.
Stephen was left by a heap of ancient stones among the wondering guards. 'What is the matter with Monsieur Duhamel?' asked the deputy-governor, standing there with a list in his hand.
'I believe he has an urgent need, ' said Stephen.

And does anyone have an antidote against reading one book in several nights? I started with something like almost twenty days... Aha, writing down the starboard tack, gunwhale, bilge... Their English soundings have become as sweet for me as the native ones, which have been nourished from childhood... And now - four, or even three nights... And bless you, Mr. O'Brian, for your books being with me these days! How will I survive the turning of the last page of the last book?

S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
'Captain Babbington <...> there is not a moment to lose. I have a service to beg.'
'I shall be only too happy - delighted.'
'I desire you to marry us.'
'Very well, sir, ' said Babbington. 'Tom! Tom there. The prayerbook.'
'William, ' said Jack in an aside, 'do you know the drill?'
'Oh yes, sir. You always taught us to be prepared for the unexpected, you remember: it comes before the burial-service.'

Sea pie

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:41:54 GMT

To watch only after hearty meal

Tell me that wasn't fun again and again and again!!!

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:04:01 GMT

Lord, I love the film!! Just love it! The desire to re-watch it was constantly growing in me these recent days, in the company with irritable blue mood. I let all the to-be-done stuff to go to hell, and spent the two with a quarter hours in one of the best possible ways. First five minutes my mind was occupied with something, but inevitably I was flown and blown away. One of the curiousest things is that in spite of my knowledge of every line, the film does not fall apart on different scenes as had happened before with me with some other ones. And it's incredible, how much more nuances, details I've noticed!!! And Concert No 3 KV 216 is performed better than anywhere I've ever heard. And I always sit all the credits stupidly peering into screen.
I just love the film!!!!