Can someone tell me how 'Master & Commander' ends?

I saw up to the part where they board the Acheron, and then I had to go. I figure they win the battle. Anything else? Any of the main characters get killed off? Do they capture the ship or is it sunk to the bottom of the sea? My thanks in advance.

I liked the movie. It really took you back and gave you an idea what it was like being on a ship in that time period. But I may never get a chance to watch the end of it.

Maybe I should have posted a spoiler warning. :o

You could tell by looking at her. }(

They board and capture the ghost ship. Jack gives his lieutenant command over it; he's to sail it to the nearest friendly port for refitting.

Jack sails off (England, I think) but figures out he's been duped: he thought the captain of the Acheron dead, but he's posing as the surgeon instead. So Jack turns back to once again run down the Acheron...

I fart in their general direction.

The Captain confronts Acheron's Surgeon, who explains that the dead body here is the captain... and that before he died, he said to give you this (and hands over the sword).

And everyone is happy, even though people died (one of the midshipmen was killed, and there's a scene where the one armed middy sews him up into a sail for his burial at see, including the 'needle through the nose' for the last stitch to prove he's dead)...

And the Acheron sails away with a prize crew, and the Captain tells his surgeon that they'll head back to the Galapogos so he can complete his research, when the captain mentions to the surgeon that the Acheron's surgeon had given him the Acheron's captain's sword...

And the surgeon says "Wait a moment, Acheron's crew said they didn't have a surgeon..."

The captain's eyes get real wide, and he orders a course change to persue Acheron....

End of movie.

They board the Acheron, and capture its crew, its doctor and the captain's wife. The doctor says that the captain was killed. A junior officer is given command of the Acheron and the prisoners and told to take it back as a prize. After they depart, the English figure out that the doctor was actually the captain, so they turn around and chase after the Acheron. Roll credits.

There's close to 20 of them and they're more or less sequential. Google "Patrick O'Brian". They follow Aubrey and Maturin's lives from the time they join the Royal navy until they're old. Quite a ride!

Gyre

in the first one, which has nothing whatever to do with the movie. By "The other side of the world" he has been a Post Captain (a considerable step up in rank) long enough for the author to lost track of time. (O'Brien admitted to using 1813 over several times. In the book, if I remember, the enemy were Americans in the War of 1812).

I would love to see a prequel based on the first volume, the real "master and commander," but I guess we would need a younger Russel Crowe for that.

What the movie added to the books (however, imho) was a real sense of the crowding of an 1800 sailing frigate. To make the sensation any more real, we would need smellies.

Um, it was a talkie -- we would need smellies -- anyway, you would have to be able to perceive the stink.