Sorry for the spoiler, even if it was fairly minimal - I forget how little we get told in Master and Commander! No more, I promise.

I think O'Brian (O'Brien is the more common Irish spelling, so I hesitate; once I found myself flitting between writing about him and Flann O'Brien, a proofreading shitshow) was rather an old fraud, and not in the amusing way. I still don't know if some of the impenetrability of the descriptions of naval manoeuvres and engagements is just me being dense and not very good at spatial visualisation or O'Brian cogging furiously from accounts of Thomas Cochrane's exploits without really knowing what he's talking about. Por qué no los dos, I guess!