Thank you for a fascinating post.

In "Persuasion" we see that being a naval captain can be a road to significant riches. From S&S, we know that a minimal income for a gentleman and his family is about 1000 pounds per annum, and that it would take investments of 20000 pounds to generate this much in interest.

In the light of all this, less than 1000 pounds prize money for being in on the Battle of Trafalgar seems pretty insignificant. It is not like a captain could count on having 20 such opportunities in his career. How did captains acquire their wealth? Did the sensible ones simply save their salary?

(But Captain Wentworth was not so sensible: "Captain Wentworth had no fortune. He had been lucky in his profession; but spending freely, what had come freely, had realized nothing.
But he was confident that he should soon be rich: full of life and ardour, he knew that he should soon have a ship, and soon be on a station that would lead to everything he wanted." This implies that it was possible to gain a fortune without saving salary.)

In "Persuasion", we learn the names of the ships Captain Wentworth commanded (from a quick scan, "Asp" and "Laconia", but I might have missed one.) Were these real ships? (I suspect not - otherwise the real captains at the times Wentworth was supposedly commanding might have taken offense at the book.)