In the 6,000 pages of the 20 completed books (and one incomplete) in Patrick O'Brian's series regarding the exploits of the Royal Navy's Lucky Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin during the Napoleonic Wars, coffee plays a significant role in life aboard ships. (In keeping with double guns, Maturin has a Manton fowling piece.) From the Mauritius Command, book 4 in the series, an exchange between Maturin and Aubrey:
'... This coffee has a damned odd taste.'
'This I attribute to the excrement of rats. Rats have eaten our entire stock; and I take the present brew to be a mixture of the scrapings at the bottom of the sack.'
'I thought it had a familiar tang,' said Jack. 'Killick, you may tell Mr Seymour, with my compliments, that you are to have a boat. And if you don't find at least a stone of beans among the squadron, you need not come back...'
73 Gil
