High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! John "Jack" Aubrey, KB , is a fictional character in the Aubrey–Maturin series of novels by Patrick O`Brian. The series portrays his rise from Lieutenant to Rear-Admiral in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. The twenty (and one incomplete draft)-book series encompasses Aubrey`s adventures and various commands along his course to flying a rear admiral`s flag. He starts as a lieutenant, depressed, poor and without a ship until he is given his first command: a fourteen-gun brig-rigged sloop, HMS Sophie.