Captain Aubrey's Commands

NEW: 
The edition of 250 on canvas by Geoff Hunt PPRSMA
Signed in ink  and varnished, with 2-inch margins all around.

Image size: 17 x 25.5 inches (43cm x 65cm)

Geoff Hunt in his book The Marine Art of Geoff Hunt writes:
"This picture brings together vessels from different stages of Captain Aubrey's career in the Royal Navy.  To the right is the 14-gun brig-sloop Sophie of 1801, his first independent command as 'Master and Commander'.  A tiny vessel by modern standards, only 78 feet long on the gun deck - scarcely more than a yacht - nevertheless her crew numbered between 80 and 90 all told.

At the middle left is the 28-gun frigate Surprise, the ex-French corvette L'Unité, aboard which so many of Aubrey's adventures are set.

In the middle distance looms the 74-gun battleship Bellona; while the ship at the extreme left distance, if an identity is required, is the 50-gun Leopard, lagging behind the others as 50-gun ships were prone to do.

All these vessels had a real existence in the Royal Navy under those names, except Sophie.  The vessels carry the appropriate flags for their respective stages in Aubrey's career; The Bellona, for example, carries a commodore's broad pennant at the main.  As for the setting, it is the Mediterranean, off whose rocky and scented coasts Aubrey spent so much of his career."