(no subject)

[solitary_summer]

[Only three hours of work today, so I'm luxuriating here with music and a second cup of coffee, enjoying what actually is the last real breathing space before Christmas...]

Still wondering whatever possessed me to want to write even so much (or so little) as a tiny bit of fanfiction... So I did a little past-midnight research yesterday and found out that the last Aubrey/Maturin volume is set only in 1816, which was something of an agreeable surprise - surprise, because the first four volumes cover ten years, and I rather presumed it would go on at this pace - never imagined he'd manage to fit fifteen volumes in the timespan of six years, agreeable because this way I don't have to find a way for book canon to somehow accommodate my poor little ficlet and can (e.g.) blithely make up a name for a ship for, and give it the stern gallery I want as a setting. On the flip side, I need something of a time-frame, a destination at the very least, since a ship of the royal navy doesn't cruise around aimlessly. That leaves me to research the British history of the late 1820ies and wherever the navy was employed then; history of Canada, maybe, since for a variety of reasons I want to send then west across the Atlantic.

When was dinner usually served on board of a ship? What kind of bird was rare or almost extinct in Britain at that time?

And really, in any case it is probably not the best idea (something of an understatement, that) for German-speaking me to even attempt to dabble in the world of O'Brian.

::headdesk::

Moreover, it continues to perplex me why my ex-academic brain suddenly comes up with all kinds of plot-bunnies, seeing as it never showed the least inclination for writing fiction before.