In his comprehensive work on frigate command in the Napoleonic Wars, The Star Captains, Wareham has explored the close affinity and camaraderie that often developed among frigate crews, particularly when they served together across multiple commands under the leadership of gifted and charismatic captains. Through independent cruising, crewing and taking prizes, undertaking cutting out expeditions and shore-based operations, frigate service allowed young officers to gain considerable experience at a young age and to forge a shared identity that often persisted long after crews were paid off and dispersed to other ships of the fleet. Wareham quotes Captain Abraham Crawford's reminiscence that ‘those of the frigate school’ differed widely from crews of ships of the line, sloops and gun brigs: ‘Of this they seemed themselves aware, avoiding as much as they could an intimacy with the others and forming as much as possible, a society apart.’

There is no doubt that the officers and men who served under Pellew's command aboard the Nymphe, the Arethusa, and the Indefatigable developed a strong shared identity that bound them together, even after Pellew was forced to relinquish command of his beloved frigate and the crew were scattered across the fleet. Unfortunately no personal correspondence dating from this period has been found from the young gentlemen who followed Pellew from the Indefatigable to the insubordinate ship of the line Impetueux. Even Nicholas Pateshall, who wrote so enthusiastically when he joined Pellew's crew, is silent. However it is not hard to imagine that the Indefatigables would indeed have formed a society apart from the mutinous crew of the Impetueux. Certainly one of the Indefatigables, Henry Hart, was a witness for the prosecution at the court martial of the Impetueux mutineers, and Osler tells a, possibly apocryphal, tale that when the hour came to execute the condemned men, Pellew distinguished the conduct of the Indefatigables from that of their shipmates.