HMS Surprise - Cochrane; Maturin's Pay

A Naval Miscellany

This week’s post is two unconnected notes on the naval history behind O’Brian’s third Aubrey-Maturin novel. If you like this kind of thing, please share it!

Cochrane, Again

In last week’s post on naval officer typologies, I discussed the group of historical frigate captains that O’Brian used as inspiration for Jack Aubrey. I left out a curious passage in which O’Brian nearly breaks the fourth wall—that is, he seemingly acknowledges some of the debate about the inspiration for his books that we covered in the Author’s Note posts. He lists the several officers we discussed last week (Dundas, Riou, and Seymour); and then he has Maturin reflect on whether Cochrane was a typical naval officer:

perhaps Cochrane; but no, Cochrane ashore was too flamboyant to be typical, too full of himself, too conscious of his own value, too much affected by that Scotch love of a grievance. … There was something of Cochrane in Jack, a restless impatience of authority, a strong persuasion of being in the right; but not enough to disqualify him, not nearly enough; and in any case it had been diminishing fast these last years.¹

Cochrane, you’ll remember, was the brave and skilled captain of HMS Speedy whose capture of the much larger Spanish xebec frigate El Gamo inspired the plot of Master and Commander. But he was also insubordinate, sensitive, greedy, and arrogant.

The way I read this passage, O’Brian is using Maturin’s internal monologue to express something like his own thoughts. He admits how influential Cochrane was for his initial conception of Jack Aubrey, but then tries to distance himself from Cochrane—and in turn Aubrey from Cochrane, their resemblance “diminishing fast these last years.”

Why would O’Brian try to distance Aubrey from Cochrane?

O’Brian’s main source for Cochrane’s life was Christopher Lloyd’s biography, published in 1947. In terms of biographies of this complicated person, there are far worse options that O’Brian could have chosen, and as a result, O’Brian seems to have been relatively clear-eyed about Cochrane’s many failures.² But it is interesting to see O’Brian use a subsequent novel’s text to push back on the narrative that Cochrane = Aubrey. Ironically, it was when O’Brian went back to Cochrane for inspiration, in Reverse of the Medal, that his series truly took off in the U.S. market. (More on that in a future post.)

How much does Maturin make?

In the first of two excruciating experiences for Maturin in Bombay, he proposes to Diana Villiers. After she turns him down, he faints, and after ten minutes of silence, he persists, attempting to make his case as a suitor: “I have about ten thousand pounds, I believe; an estate worth as much again, and capable of improvement. There is also my pay … Two or three hundred a year.”³ That passage was catnip for me, given the subject of my first book.

Let’s look at this from three different perspectives:

1. How much is two or three hundred a year?

2. Is Maturin’s pay historically accurate?

3. Is Maturin inflating his pay to convince Diana to marry him?

To answer the first two questions, we need to establish when the book takes place. The historical action between the French squadron under Charles-Alexandre Linois and the East India convoy under Nathaniel Dance happened in February 1804, but we know that O’Brian has chosen not to adhere to that date because HMS Surprise is set after the October 1804 capture of the Spanish treasure ships. That provides the early boundary—after October 1804. On the other end, the Cape Colony remains in Dutch hands through the book, causing Surprise to have to sail well south. In real life the British recaptured the Cape in January 1806, so that provides the later boundary. Therefore it’s fair to say that the events of HMS Surprise take place mostly in 1805.

Let’s try question 1 again:

How much is two or three hundred a year in 1805?

I find it tiresome when historians blithely use inflation calculators to tell you that £200 in 1805 is £22,062.24 today. That is true enough, I guess, and purchasing power is a useful way to think about incomes. But the 2025 economy is very different from that of 1805, so I prefer to think about how much £200 was in relative terms. The Scottish statistician Patrick Colquhoun tried to do exactly that in 1803, listing estimated incomes for major occupational categories. Here’s a small sample:

£700 - Gentlemen and ladies living on income
£500 - Eminent clergymen
£500 - Ship-owners
£200 - Engineers, surveyors, master builders
£150 - Shopkeepers
£150 - Teachers
£120 - Tailors
£120 - Lesser clergymen
£100 - Innkeepers

Using Colquhoun’s estimates, then, Maturin thinks that his wages put him on the upper end of the “middling sort”—not on the level of a bishop or a ship-owning merchant, but well-off compared to other professionals like engineers and teachers.

Is Maturin’s pay historically accurate?

No. In 1805, the surgeon of a sixth rate frigate like Surprise earned £79 per year. Moreover, he had to pay for his own medical supplies, which involved a significant initial outlay. In practice, he probably earned more than £79, since he received 15 shillings for every man suffering from venereal disease, and there were a few extra supplements available to surgeons to defray their costs in wartime that might have pushed his income just over £100 per year. But that’s still a long ways from £200.

Is Maturin inflating his salary to convince Diana to marry him?

Well, maybe. Despite what I said above, “two or three hundred a year” might not be a terrible estimate of Maturin’s annual earnings. We need to factor in two other issues.

First, prize money. A surgeon’s share of a prize was small but not insignificant. Take the value of the prize after agent’s fees and divide by eight. Then, take that eighth and divide it equally among the warrant officers (surgeon, purser, chaplain, boatswain, carpenter, gunner, but not the master) and the Marine lieutenants. Maturin probably net 1/64th of every prize Surprise captured. To get his income to the lower bound of his estimate to Diana, Surprise would need to capture prizes worth ~£6,400 annually. That would be a very good year for a frigate, but not entirely unreasonable.

A rule of thumb that I and other historians have used to estimate prize money is to say that it was equal to a sailor’s wages—in other words, take the pay tables and double them to get total compensation in wartime. There are a thousand caveats I won’t bore you with and exceptions in both directions, but even though that estimate might be on the high side, it seems plausible.

Given how desperate Maturin is to marry Diana, and given that he recognizes the importance of a good income to Diana, I think Maturin took his £79 per year, factored in Aubrey’s track record with prizes, and rounded up. That suggests an impressively nuanced understanding of naval pay on O’Brian’s part. He knew just how to have Maturin overstate his pay so as to be wrong, but appropriately wrong given the context of his proposal to Diana.

The other possibility is that O’Brian jumped the gun on some major reforms that the Royal Navy enacted in 1807 which dramatically increased surgeons’ salaries to aid recruitment and retention and to improve the quality of candidates. Instead of paying surgeons by the rate of their ship (so that surgeons on bigger ships got paid more), they were sorted by seniority and paid accordingly. Under the new system, senior surgeons earned £328 per year, and the most junior earned about £200—in other words, “two or three hundred a year.” Add in prize money and it’s fair to say that surgeons after 1807 made good money—not Canning money, but not poverty wages either.

Stephen’s status as a physician (i.e. an actual medical doctor, rather than simply someone who had passed an examination with the Surgeon’s Company) would not have changed his wages as a surgeon, but it would have made him eligible to become Physician of the Fleet. In 1805, the incumbent, Dr. Leonard Gillespie, earned £465 per year, allowing him to live (by his own account) “in a princely style, free from any expense.”

But Stephen has no interest in that position. He is happy to serve as a surgeon on Aubrey’s ship, however small it is, and in 1805, he would have been paid £79 per year. I think we should give O’Brian credit for knowing what he was talking about, and for letting his character be wrong. Maturin told Diana “two or three hundred a year” for the same reason that every suitor exaggerates.⁴

1. HMS Surprise, 110.

2. You can read John Hattendorf’s scholarly assessment of Lloyd’s biography if you click on the sample available on Amazon.

3. HMS Surprise, 210.

4. Obviously all of this analysis comes from my A Social History of British Naval Officers, 1775–1815 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), chapter 6.