Allusions/references To Actual History, Geography and Current Science
The real-life Leopard's earlier involvement in the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair gets a mention, and the book deals with the tension between the English and Americans on the eve of the War of 1812. O'Brian based the account of the near sinking of the Leopard (after striking an iceberg) on an actual event involving HMS Guardian and her commander Edward Riou in 1789. The novel contains an unflattering portrait of Lieutenant James Grant.
Captain William Bligh's Governorship of New South Wales is mentioned and his deposition. The Rum Rebellion, also known as the Rum Puncheon Rebellion, of 1808 was the only successful armed takeover of government in Australia's recorded history. As Governor of New South Wales, William Bligh was deposed by the New South Wales Corps under the command of Major George Johnston, working closely with John Macarthur, on 26 January 1808. Afterwards, acting governors were sworn in until the arrival from Britain of Major-General Lachlan Macquarie at the beginning of 1810.
Read more about this topic: Desolation Island (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words actual, geography, current and/or science:
“You may well ask how I expect to assert my privacy by resorting to the outrageous publicity of being one’s actual self on paper. There’s a possibility of it working if one chooses the terms, to wit: outshouting image-gimmick America through a quietly desperate search for self.”
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“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
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“Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.”
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