Survival Arts

A short thought about the fiction of adolescence

One of things I'd not taken the time to mull over in writing when I wrote my recommendation of "Master and Commander" some days ago was the portrayal of the role of boys on the HMS Surprise (which I believe is the Sophie in the original book) in the Nelsonian Age of seafaring. The ship set sail on a mission to engage and capture an actively hostile enemy, a 44-gun French privateer (a bit ahistorical, but not detractingly so), with teenage and preteen midshipmen on board. What better apprenticeship for a potential young naval officer than an education while underway? Anything else is a poor substitute. Of course, this was set in 1805, during the Napoleonic Wars. Later decades would see the rise of that Victorian social fiction, "adolescence," the synthetic prolongation of childhood by legislative fiat.