"Captain Aubrey's Commands" By GEOFF HUNT R.S.M.A. OIL ON CANVAS, 20" x 30"

This picture brings together vessels from different stages of Captain Aubrey's
career in the Royal Navy. At right is the fourteen-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 eighty and ninety men all told.
The large ship middle left is the 28-gun frigate Surprise, the ex-French
corvette I'Unite, upon 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 a name be required, is the 50-gun Leopard, lagging
behind the others as fifty-gun ships were prone to do. All these vessels had a
real existence in the Royal Navy under those names, except perhaps Sophie.
Though closely based on Lord Cochrane's Speedy, Sophie has a little raised
quarterdeck which the prototype lacked. The vessels carry the appropriate flag
for their respective stages in Aubrey's career; the Bellona, for example,
carries a commodore's broad pendant at the main. As for the setting, it is the
Mediterranean, off whose rocky and scented coasts he spent so much of his
time.

This painting was created by Geoff Hunt expressly for the "Aubrey's World"
exhibit at The Seamen's Church Institute, Water Street Gallery, 241 Water
Street, New York City It will be on display May 20, 1998 - April 30, 1999.
Gallery hours are Monday - Friday 8:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. Saturday noon-6:00
p.m.