Phew

Phew. A close call today. We are tacking in a somewhat choppy sea with a few blusteries to the north, off the coast of Scotland, and now that we have turned in our Royal Navy enseign and adopted French colours for a while to see if we can attract any French corvettes and maybe fire a few broadsides, so life is very interesting. A new scottish navy is emerging and we have seen a few scottish square rigs around the northern silver seas of Tacitus fame just by Ullapool. The scots - a very int lot. A new French warship has appeared on the distant horizons though, a very big brown three-tier gunner, called the SS Corbeille de L'eau which is built a little like the old Sovereign of the Seas, captained by a very thin-lipped mean miserly reptilian sort of napoleon-worshipper called Old Nick Kernet, nicknamed by the boys down below in our choir of happy lads as Capitaine Kernet the Frog. Grace a Dieu it is nearly night-time so we might slip into one of the islands to the north by the Shetlands for some supplies. Flying French colours is very attractive. A nice tricoloeur. And very big. Bigger these standard issues than we thought. We have all swapped uniforms too, but we must try to resist adopting revolutionary values too. This is only a fiction for the moment.