Plagiarism

[chickenfeet]

I just read Sir Thomas Cochrane's account of his cruise in the Mediterranean in HMS Speedy during the French revolutionary wars. Interesting enough in itself but what really gets me is that Patrick O'Brian lifts the story almost word for word in Master and Commander. There is a long tradition of using thinly disguised real life accounts in that type of genre novel but this exceeds all bounds of reasonable decency!