[ O'Brian / Desolation Island ]
Patrick O'Brian (1914 - 2000), born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist, biographer, poet, short-story writer, and translator, best known for his 20-volume series of scrupulously researched historical novels following the exploits of "Lucky" Jack Aubrey, a British Naval officer, and his friend and companion Dr Stephen Maturin, during the Napoleonic Wars at the turn of the 19th Century. The popularity of these novels was considerably boosted by the award-winning 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, starring Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany and directed by Peter Weir, which brought O'Brian's most famous literary characters vividly to life.
The fifth novel in the series, Desolation Island (published 1978), contains multiple references to Newfoundlands owing to the fact one of the officers on board Aubrey's ship, Babbington, has brought his Newfoundland dog on the voyage.
The first mention of the dog occurs in Chapter 3 during a ship's dinner: Babbington "was giving a spirited account of a fox-chase when he was called away — the Newfoundland dog he had brought aboard, an animal the size of a calf, had seen fit to guard the blue cutter, in which Babington had laid his Guernsey frock, and to forbid anyone to touch so much as its gunwale."
The dog is mentioned again in Chapter 3 as Dr. Maturin is showing Mrs. Wogan, one of the female passengers — and a convict being transported to Botany Bay — around the poop deck, that part of the ship where she is allowed to walk by way of taking some fresh air and exercise:
"The wardroom goat and Babbington's Newfoundland left the hencoops by the wheel and paced across to meet them. "Do not be afraid, ma'am," cried Babbington, approaching with a smile that would have been even more winning if youthful folly had left him more in the way of teeth, "he is as gentle as a lamb."
Mrs Wogan made no reply other than a gentle inclination of her head. The dog smelt her proffered hand and walked after her, wagging its tail."
A couple of pages further on in Chapter 3 Dr. Maturin remarks on Mrs. Wogan's wan appearance, and asks her if she's hungry; when she remarks that indeed she is, he pulls a sausage from his coat pocket and begins slicing it.
He fed her slices, advising that they should be chewed very thoroughly, and he noticed that she was very near tears again — that she secretly glided some slices to the Newfoundland, and that those she swallowed would scarcely go down. Babbington's head appeared on the larboard poop ladder: he mounted, went through the motions of looking for his dog, feigned to catch sight of it, came over, and said, "Come, Pollux, you must not make a nuisance of yourself. I trust he has not been importuning you, ma'am?"
But Mrs. Wogan said no more than "No, sir," in a very low voice. . . .
There are two passing references to the dog in Chapter 4. Here's the first:
. . . . Day after day Mrs. Wogan walked on the poop, often with Dr. Maturin, always with the dog and goat. . . ."
The second occurs just before Babbington is about to be reprimanded by Captain Aubrey: "Babbinton received the expected summons . . . licked his lips, looking absurdly like his anxious, apprehensive dog, and stepped aft, quite bowed."
Two more references to the dog come in Chapter 5, in which Dr. Maturin discovers that his having grown a beard has an unexpected consequence:
. . . Stephen brought Mrs. Wogan on to the poop, where he was obliged to repel a dangerous attack from Pollux, Babbington's Newfoundland; Pollux did not recognize him in his beard, and being attached to Mrs. Wogan, defended her as a matter of duty. Even when she seized its ear, pulled it away, and told it not to be a damned fool — the gentleman was a friend — the animal distrusted him, and kept just behind his hams, uttering an organ-like growl, both with the inspiration and the outward breath. Babbington was below, so when she had reproached the dog and even thumped its loving head in vain, she tied a signal-halliard round its neck and attached it to the fife-rail. . . ."
The second reference to the Newfoundland in Chapter 5 is brief: thinking about the few comforts of her life aboard ship, Mrs. Wogan reflects on the "dear fool of a dog that marched up and down the poop with her. . . ."
Chapter 7 provides another mention of the dog during an officer's meal:
They drank the King; Stephen pushed back his chair, not choosing to stay with the execrable wine, tripped over Babbington's Newfoundland for the hundredth time, and stepped onto the quarterdeck. . . ."
A second mention in Chapter 7 occurs when an enemy vessel emerges from a storm close behind Aubrey's ship. Taking evasive action, the ship changes course so quickly "that Babbington's dog was flung outward, colliding with a carronade."
Chapter 8 finds Babbington's Newf alluded to again when Captain Aubrey, slightly injured and trying to pass quickly through the ship, says "Mr. Babbington, get that hairy thing of yours out of the fairway." And a second time in the same chapter, when Babbington is trying to convince other officers that currents flow differently around ice islands. Since Babbington's prior experience was in the Norther Hemisphere and the action of this novel takes place in the Southern, the others dismiss Babbington's theory: "Other voices maintained that this was all stuff . . . the southern hemisphere was quite difference; Babbington was only showing away, with his Newfoundland Banks; he might keep that for his Newfoundland dog, or tell it to the Marines."
The final mentions of the dog come in Chapter 10. The first occurs when Babbington's Newf proves his value as a water-rescue dog. While the ship is undergoing repairs on the "Desolation Island" of the title, Dr Maturin sets out in a small canvas boat to go to a small nearby island to collect wildlife specimens. Although Maturin was wearing a pair of sea-elephant bladders, inflated with air to buoy him up should he fall overboard, he indeed manages to upset the boat only to find that the bladders were insufficient to keep his head above water, and "only the presence of Babbington's Newfoundland preserved him. . . ."
The final reference comes when Babbington's Newf again creates a bit of a disruption during a ship's dinner: during one officer's animated account of another officer's career we are told "Babbington's Newfoundland, excited by the merriment, interrupted with a melodious baying, and the general talk flowed on . . . ."
In the sixth novel of the series, The Fortunes of War (1979), we learn (in Chapter 5) of the unfortunate fate of Babbington's Newfoundland: "They [Maturin and the American spy Louisa Wogan, who featured prominently in the previous novel] were lost in a flood of reminiscence.... How was . . . Mr Babbington's dear fool of a dog? Eaten, alas, by the natives of the Friendly Islands; but they had offered a maiden in exchange."
