Of course

Of course out here on the high seas, at night, when there's nothing much between the boys and the deep blue, it is always gusty and blustery. A high wind can blow a boy clean off the poop-deck. Like it or hate it, the napoleonic SS Neptune can sometimes set sail in storms like this bluster and gale of a night, being a fast caravette of a ship, though a bit of a frigate by all and sundry account, and yet they all say, the dark and evil French, that the Neptune is their finest corvette, oblivious to the rise of a new species of French attack boat, the SS Jolie, captained by Capitaine Jean-Claude O'Leary, the famous or infamous Franco-hibernican captain of the watch who had all his crew murdered because they failed to see the HMS Henry VIII slipping out of the deltas and eddies of Alexandria in the fog. Yes those French frigates are quite a vicious lot. Here on the HMS Repulse we are to maintain our watches this night, lest another French fast attack boat slip out of the port at Brest and down the coast to link up with the Napoleonic Spanish. A dreadful lot that stink of garlic and spice and paella, with oceans of Sangria flowing most nights in the officers's mess, and the spices that flutter across the high winds of the Bay of Biscay. We have been at war now with Spain for more than 500 years. Hardcastles these Spanish and most focused of the three enemy navies. Back across the Atlantic tonight. Then on to Washington.