Mr. Midshipman Easy - Book 6

I read this on my kindle.  While the transcription was mostly good, there were some typos.

Mr. Midshipman Easy by Frederick Marryat was published in 1836 and is considered the original British naval novel, the forefather of the Hornblower and Aubrey-Maturin series.  Something I found interesting is that Marryat actually was an officer in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars, yet this novel is light and frothy and doesn't have the depth and history that is included in books by later authors of this genre.

This book tells a long and complicated seafaring yarn about a young man named Jack Easy.  He comes from a wealthy family with eccentric parents.  He himself is pretty incorrigible but smart, kind, adventurous and full of good will when he isn't mixing it up with mischief.  The book is comical with Jack and his friends, Gascoigne and Mesty especially, getting in and out of scrapes.

One of the humorous themes is Jack's father's philosophy of the rights of man and equality.  Jack has grown up on these ideas and this is part of the reason he is so unmanageable, for he takes it to mean he can do whatever he wants.  He naively believes that the Navy is the place where there is true equality.  He is told this by his distant cousin Captain Wilson who is trying to get him out from under the influence of his zany parents.  So Jack goes to sea with Captain Wilson and has many adventures, does many naughty things, fights banditti and duels, falls in love with a girl from Malta and all along the way he's got a couple of paternal superiors watching over him, including the governor of Malta.  Everywhere Jack goes he is liked.  He's a quick learner and always gains the best of every situation with his quick thinking.  At the end of the novel, Jack is fully convinced that a more libertarian view of society is much closer to the truth!

One character in the novel is quite interesting.  Mesty (short for Mephistopheles) is an Ashantee prince from Africa who was captured and sold into slavery.  He learned English working the docks of New York from the Irish there.  He found out that there was no slavery in England so he stows away on a British ship.  Alas, he finds he does not like being the lowest member of a ship's crew where he must boil water for everyone.  He's a proud prince of his own nation!  He takes to Jack because of his talk of equality, but once Jack and he receive promotions, he begins to change his tune.

There are many complicated adventures, much fighting and daredevil antics, but all turns out well in the end for our hero.  The tone of the novel is often tongue in cheek.  It is a light and enjoyable read with lots of nautical terminology.  I am glad I read it.

This book fulfills the 'seaworthy' square in my bingo blackout challenge.

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