Speaking of number of guns, I recall reading that the "Santisima Trinidad" which was the Spanish flagship during the Battle of Trafalgar had 103 guns. Crazy!

Interestingly, Patrick O'Brian imagined that Charlton Heston would have made a good Jack Aubrey.

He definitely had the acting ability to pull it off but I dont know how good his English accent was. I dont think I've ever seen a movie with Heston where he used one.

I thought O'Brian's mentioning Heston was very strange as Heston's body type is completely different than Aubrey's in the books; in the books, Maturin is constantly needling Aubrey about his corpulence whereas Heston epitomises lean. Peter Weir said that if they had cast the characters of Aubrey and Maturin as described in the books, the characters would have resembled Laurel and Hardy and the audience would not have bought into the story. In the end, they decided to take some liberties with the characters, which I think was the right decision.

I think I have read everything Reeman (Kent) has ever written. The last few have been a bit repetitive of earlier works....but I still enjoyed them.

The Bolitho series is excellent and spans generations of the Bolitho family and touches on many great historical naval events.

There's a relatively new series by Julian Stockwell--the "Kydd" series that's about a guy who goes from pressed seaman to admiral. I read the first two books a couple of years ago. Pretty good but I couldn't bring myself to start another series.

I think it was actually 130. 30 more than the Victory

Got it yet?

I meant to type 130. Damn internet typing dyslexia!