Aubrey–Maturin series Times" Best Seller list. These novels comprise the heart of the canon of an author often compared to Jane Austen, C. S. Forester and other British authors central to the English literature canon. The 2003 film "" took material from books in this series, notably "Master and Commander", "HMS Surprise", "The Letter of Marque", "The Fortune of War", and particularly "The Far Side of the World". Russell Crowe played the role of Jack Aubrey, and Paul Bettany that of Stephen Maturin. Patrick O'Brian's "The Golden Ocean" (1956) and "The Unknown Shore" (1959) both depict fictional pairs of young men, loosely
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World O'Brian, but the basic plot mostly comes from "The Far Side of the World". However, in the film version, the action takes place in 1805, during the Napoleonic wars, instead of 1813 during the Anglo-American War of 1812, as the producers wished to avoid offending American audiences. In consequence, the fictional opponent was changed from the USS "Norfolk" to the French privateer frigate "Acheron". "Acheron" in the film was reconstructed by the film's special-effects team who took stem-to-stern digital scans of USS "Constitution" at her berth in Boston, from which the computer model of "Acheron" was rendered. The stern chase