The Truelove by Patrick O'Brian

So The Truelove is about a woman named Clarissa Oakes (which is the name of the book as it was published originally) and a ship named the Truelove which was a fur-trading ship.

The book was weird ... I really never got into it.  The key thing you need from this book is that Clarissa Oakes was a prostitute in England, but got sent to the penal colony.  She knows the highly placed government official who has been feeding the French vital information ... the contact that Ledward and Wray knew.

Stephen acquires this information while he and Clarissa were on a walk.  He then gives her all the papers she needs to get back to Sir Blaine and inform him of the highly placed spy.

Other than that, in my opinion, this book was fairly worthless ... a lot of minutiae for a critical bit of plot forwarding.