Thorp wrote numerous letters to his parents and siblings throughout his career, except for his time on "Thisbe" in Nova Scotia during his first year of service and his subsequent time on "Magnificent". These were deposited in the National Maritime Museum in 1968 in the form of two letterbooks. Regrettably, no record of persons inspecting these letterbooks seems to have been kept by the National Maritime Museum but anyone studying them in detail who is familiar with the Aubrey–Maturin series of novels of Patrick O'Brian may find a remarkable coincidence between some of the descriptions in Thorp's letters and events or characters in O'Brian's novels, inviting speculation whether O'Brian may have read the letters and been inspired by their content. Thorp's letters describing the escape from Toulon, the attack on the Mortella Tower and the siege of Saint-Florent, the blockade of Corsica, the capture of Calvi and the cutting out of the "Principe Fernando" are particularly noteworthy.