Aficionados of the Aubrey Maturin series will know this scene, representing the start of Lieutenant Jack Aubrey s long run of luck, as his brig Sophie sights her very first prize and goes in hot pursuit. It is late afternoon off the Spanish Mediterranean coast; after a long chase overnight, Jack cleverly anticipates his prey s evasive change of course in the darkness and traps her at first light. His brig is fictional; though both she and her actions are modeled otherwise exactly upon Cochrane s Speedy, Speedy had nothing like this imposing spread of stern windows. As for the polacre, the term was applied to a variety of hull types and sizes, usually Mediterranean in origin and rigged with one or more lateen sails, but it meant only that the masts were in one piece – a pole in fact – rather than made up of several sections as are Sophie s.  – Geoff Hunt