"Except that Britain didn't use agents in this manner at this time-- this is a 20th century device. The Admiralty gathered intelligence, all right, but that's what it was: intelligence. .... I'm afraid I'd have to see an actual historical case before I could swallow this." Hunh, you clearly have a very different impression of what Maturin was tasked to do. Here are the ones I can find quickly on wikipedia: propaganda in the Mauritius, oppose agents while in Boston (lucky coincidence, of course), "sent on a mission to the Baltic to persuade the Catalan garrison of the fortress at Grimsholm to defect", political duel for influence at the Sultan's court, south american mission to gain influence with cash & prizes* Then there is whole aspect of Maturin only accepting missions he wants to, being a free agent against Bonaparte, being a well-known and respected naturalist (wanders widely from the ship), all-in-all, he's just not a full-time spy, and I don't see that he could be taken as being part of the normal 'intelligence' apparatus. He's really just being a troublesome pest. I guess part of the problem you have is that these missions are too complex for the Admiralty? In which case, I'm content to give the benefit of the doubt (as in, how are we 'really sure' they didn't). (Even if we are really sure, we're talking about a series that admittedly extends a historical year to a sequence of events taking much longer. So absolute historical accuracy is already out the window.) So, I guess all I'm saying, is it seems a harsh criticism, though of course different things work for different people. I have a hard time accepting Matt Damon as a spy/assassin myself. *okay, not prizes really