Cruising with Patrick O’Brian

Unhappily it is no longer possible to take an ocean cruise with Patrick O’Brian himself. But Annemarie Victory did just that, and now offers the next best thing through her specialty tour company. Here’s how she introduces it:

When Patrick O’Brian agreed to sail with me on the SEA CLOUD in April 1999, it resulted in perhaps the most fascinating and memorable of my over 40 charters of this glorious ship. Urbane, charming, witty and surprisingly gregarious, Patrick quickly fell into the wonderful shipboard life aboard SEA CLOUD. Indeed, as he disembarked after the cruise (which was almost the same as the one described in this brochure), he told me that he definitely wanted to sail with us again, and would really look forward to it. This possible reunion ended, of course, with his unexpected and tragic death just a few months later.

It is rather charming that Ms. Victory could see the death of an 85-year-old man as “unexpected and tragic.”

The cruise aboard the Sea Cloud runs from April 23 to May 2, beginning in Barcelona, stopping at Minorca (where Captain Aubrey rescued Dr. Maturin from torture at the hands of the French), then proceeding to Port Vendres, Bandol, Aix-en-Provence, St. Tropez, and St. Florent on Corsica. There are lectures by Count Nikolai Tolstoy and Brian Lavery, the authors of books on O’Brian, and an optional extension to Nice. Prices start at $6,600: too rich for my blood, but not out of the question for a true fan.