on id="ued8d55ef-ecab-5f91-8509-6ec80a96ec4f">
PATRICK O’BRIAN
The Reverse of the Medal
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Copyright © Patrick O’Brian 1986
Patrick O’Brian asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780006499268
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007429387
Version: 2019-01-15
Contents
Copyright
Diagram of a Square-Rigged Ship
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Patrick O’Brian by William Waldegrave
About the Author
The Works of Patrick O’Brian
The sails of a square-rigged ship, hung out to dry in a calm.
1 Flying jib
2 Jib
3 Fore topmast staysail
4 Fore staysail
5 Foresail, or course
6 Fore topsail
7 Fore topgallant
8 Mainstaysail
9 Main topmast staysail
10 Middle staysail
11 Main topgallant staysail
12 Mainsail, or course
13 Maintopsail
14 Main topgallant
15 Mizzen staysail
16 Mizzen topmast staysail
17 Mizzen topgallant staysail
18 Mizzen sail
19 Spanker
20 Mizzen topsail
21 Mizzen topgallant
Illustration source: Serres, Liber Nauticus. Courtesy of The Science and Technology Research Center, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundation
Author’s Note
Those who have read any of the scores of books about Lord Cochrane, or the Earl of Dundonald as he became on his father’s death, will remember that he was tried before Lord Ellenborough at the Guildhall for a fraud on the Stock Exchange and found guilty.
Lord Cochrane and his descendants always passionately maintained that he was not guilty and that Lord Ellenborough’s conduct of the trial was grossly unfair; and most of his biographers, including Professor Christopher Lloyd, the best of them all, agree. Lord Ellenborough and his descendants, however, took the opposite view, and one of them set about refuting the publications of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth earls in a book devoted to the question. But he found that he was not competent to deal with the legal aspects and he handed over the task, together with his papers, to Mr Attlay of Lincoln’s Inn, a very able lawyer whose long, fully-documented and closely-reasoned book might shake all but the most determined of Lord Cochrane’s supporters.
Yet the function of Mr Attlay’s book, as far as this tale is concerned, was not to prove or disprove the guilt of either side but rather to show exactly how the trial proceeded, and this knowledge I have used, simplifying the complex legal issues, annihilating scores of witnesses, but carefully retaining the structure of the trial, together
