Books like Post Captain

Post Captain makes me wonder if Patrick O'Brian originally intended Master and Commander as a one off (and if you know the answer please don't tell me. I like not knowing).Master and Commander is a great book, and our introduction to Captain Jack Aubrey and Doctor Stephen Maturin is a great hook, but it can stand alone as a simple Naval adventure without any need for additional information about the men and women confined by its pages. This could, of course, simply be a result of its place as the first book in the series -- a series which stretches just over twenty books -- but there is little if any building for the future in Master and Commander, making it more in conception like O'Brian's The Catalans than his Aubrey-Maturin series.But all of that "future building," all of that stuff needed to sustain a tale over twenty books, is present in Post Captain.Many, though not all, of the characters that will become important to Jack and Stephen make their first appearance here: Mrs. Williams and her daughter, Sophia (Sophie (view spoiler)[when she becomes Jack's wife (hide spoiler)]