Portsmouth anniversary in 2016. In literature, Portsmouth is the chief location for Jonathan Meades' 1993 novel "Pompey", in which it is inhabited largely by incestuous and necrophiliac criminals. Since the release of his novel, Meades has presented a TV programme documenting Victorian architecture in Portsmouth Dockyard. In Jane Austen's novel "Mansfield Park", Portsmouth is the hometown of the main character Fanny Price, and is the setting of most of the closing chapters of the novel. In Charles Dickens' novel "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby", main protagonists Nicholas and Smike make their way to Portsmouth and get involved in a
HMS Saracen (1812) HMS Saracen (1812) HMS "Saracen" was launched in 1812 at Portsmouth for the British Royal Navy. She had an active, though brief, naval career during which she captured a number of enemy-held islands and enemy vessels. The navy sold her in 1819 and new owners employed her as a whaler for two voyages between 1819 and 1826. She was apparently wrecked in 1828 off the coast of Chile, but with little or no loss of life. The Royal Navy commissioned "Saracen" in August 1812 under Commandeer John Harper. All he had available to him were his marines and "a few