Captain Caution

Rating:
Summary: A good old-fashioned serial, but not Roberts' best
Review: At slighly more than 200 pages, *Captain Caution* may be Roberts' shortest novel after *Boon Island*. Its historical context- privateering during the War of 1812- makes it very similar to *The Lively Lady*, which I consider a superior novel for its handling of the love story and its potent evocation of Dartmoor Prison. However, a more discriminating reader will probably admit, with Booth Tarkington (Roberts's closest friend) that it is "about an entirely different sort of privateering, and about a phase of war imprisonment wholly unlike the sorry interlude of Dartmoor."

The plot is rather simple: returning from Canton and unaware that war has started between America and Britain, the merchant barque *Olive Branch* from Maine is captured by a British ship and its crew sent to Europe. Among them is the hero, Daniel Marvin, a.k.a. Captain Caution, and the Captain's daughter, strong-minded but easily blinded Corunna Dorman, whose budding attraction to Daniel appears to be crushed by her holding him responsible for her father's death during the capture. As always in Roberts' novels, the two lovers are separated by external forces and the book is basically a story of the hero's undaunted efforts to regain his dulcinea.

*Captain Caution* was a tough sell for Kenneth Roberts, and for the right reasons, I think. Carl Brandt (who must have been Roberts' agent) said that "the absence of the heroine for such a long period... would make monthly magazines reluctant to use it." And reluctant they were. As Roberts noted in his diary on October 25, 1932, "*Captain Caution* has now been to every slick magazine in the United States, and has been unhesitatingly rejected by all of them". Even the editor of *Adventure*, a magazine which Roberts said did not "pay much" and was therefore a "last resort", commented that "slackening of interest in the principal characters had killed all possibility of making *Captain Caution* into a serial".

Indeed, the main characters are much less endearing than Roberts' other creations. Daniel Marvin is first shown as a rather powerless victim and only begins to show the resourcefulness and endurance of the typical Robertsian hero much later into the book. As he puts it himself, "I've always looked for easier ways to do things, and almost always there's an easier way. It appears to me most people make things as hard for themselves as they can." His inventiveness, in the course of the novel, leads him to come up with modern boxing, the gangway pendulum and a winning formula for roulette (in whose efficacy Roberts, who was later completely duped by dowsing, may well have believed.)

For all this deluge of creativity, however, Roberts fails to give Marvin the enduring personality traits of the other fictional natives of Arundel he so lovingly protrayed. As for the love interest, Corunna Dorman, she is so deluded about both the hero and the scheming villain, Slade the slaver, and is so consistently wrong and angry, that her redemption falls rather flat.

In fact, I really thought that she would be another red herring, like Mary Mallinson in *Arundel*, while the much more lively niece of Talleyrand's would turn out to be the novel's Phoebe Nason (I consider the scenes between her and Marvin as really the most delightful of the whole work.) I found the combination of youthful naiveté and deep wisdom in her character really brilliant, and her advice to Marvin priceless: "You are doomed to be an unhappy young man if you think that no woman is a good woman unless she has made no mistakes and had no desires, ever; and in case you wish that sort of good woman, you must be careful to marry a plaster saint out of a church."

It does seem as though Roberts was more inspired by his minor characters than by his protagonists this time: Lucien Argandeau, the bragging, loquacious French privateer and ladies' man, ranks among Roberts' best drawn supporting characters, up there with Cap' Huff and King Dick.

*Captain Caution* also lacks the historical texture of Roberts' longer pieces of fiction, and feels more like a Patrick O'Brian novel, focusing on plot and dialogue rather than on immersing the reader in the period by richly detailed descriptions (indeed, O'Brian may have been inspired by this novel: at one point, Marvin escapes capture by pretending he has cholera aboard, a trick which Maturin uses in *Master and Commander* with the same effect.) In other words, if you want painlessly to absorb the equivalent of a dozen historical volumes, you would be better off with *Lydia Bailey* or *Rabble in Arms*.

This said, *Captain Caution* is a rather enjoyable book, though definitely of a lighter sort than the rest of Roberts' fiction.

Rating:
Summary: A compelling read!
Review: Captain Caution, the final installment of the Chronicles of Arundel series, is markedly different from the other five Roberts novels I have read so far. In some ways, it is the best.

Because it is written in third person instead of first, the lead character, Dan Marvin, can be developed very slowly. Early on, Marvin seems like a secondary character. As the action progresses, he becomes a reticent and hesitant protagonist. But he evetually emerges as likeable, resourceful, heroic, and uniquely American. This character, dubbed "Captain Caution" by his crew, really grows on you.

The novel despite its compactness, provides plenty of rich scenery, most notable being the prison hulk prize fight between Marvin and Little White, which jumps off the page.

Character development is, as always, superb. Argandeau, Marvin's colorful French sidekick, is among the very best of Roberts' characters, and the slave ship captain, Slade, is so subtly villainous that it's hard work not to like him a little, drooping eyelid and all. And Corunna is portrayed with such a careful balance of delicacy and depth that she is at once physically ethereal and emotionally strong, typical of Roberts' heroines.

If you could choose only one of Kenneth Roberts' fine novels, this wouldn't be the one most people (including me) would recommend. Nevertheless, it is one of the best novels I have ever read, and you're not likely to stop at one anyway, so enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Captain Caution
Review: Keneth Roberts wrote many great novels and Captain Caution is another fine example of his descriptive narrative style. You find yourself engrossed in the lives of the main characters from the battles at sea to the horrible living conditions upon the prision ships in England. There are twists and turns that will suprise you. Only Roberts could make history so vivid.

Rating:
Summary: Captain Caution
Review: Keneth Roberts wrote many great novels and Captain Caution is another fine example of his descriptive narrative style. You find yourself engrossed in the lives of the main characters from the battles at sea to the horrible living conditions upon the prision ships in England. There are twists and turns that will suprise you. Only Roberts could make history so vivid.