 The fleet also features in several of the Aubrey–Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian.The novel "Billy Budd" by Herman Melville is set on board ships of the Channel Fleet, in the immediate aftermath of the Spithead and Nore mutinies of 1797.In the novel "The War of the Worlds", the Channel Fleet protects the huge mass of refugee shipping escaping from the Essex coast in the face of the Martian onslaught.