Aubrey is between twenty and thirty years old when the first story opens, a lieutenant passing time on the island of Minorca, at a musical performance. When he returns to his inn, his letter of promotion to master and commander awaits him. He is given his first command: a fourteen-gun brig-rigged sloop, HMS "Sophie". He rises to the rank of post captain, though he is once struck off the Navy List, reinstated, then suspends himself in 1814 as peace comes in spring. As was the practice in the Royal Navy, once on the list of post captains, he moved up the list for promotion to admiral by the end of the series of novels, set during the Napoleonic Wars.