Whoosh

Whoosh - ye gads shipmates, that canon ball came right over our heads and smashed through the mainsail. Ahoy there shipmates. We have just been swung round aft by a lean corvette of the French and she is headed out to sea west of the Fiji Islands. Must have been hiding somewhere. The Galapagos Islands maybe. Anyway it is off we go and all sails to the rigging. All hands on deck. Sound the drum. Musketeers in the crow's nest. But my word the Fiji Islands were shocking quiet me hearties. Not a soul in sight apart from the cannibals. The French have done a deal with the natives methinks and are making off the supplies which they have probably bought by selling their prisoners to the polynesians. Despicable lot the frenchies. Always opportunistic and flogging our boys for a mess of pottage. Our english boys don't have a chance in these hotblood markets. They will be supper tonight on the beach. How can we rescue these poor boys? Zat is ze question. Sacre bleu et mon Dieu.

Well actually

Well ahoy there shipmates and sailors and old seadogs. We have had to reroute down to the Fiji Islands but nothing doing down here. All very quiet and idyllic, and loads of unpopulated pacific atolls. Nothing doing.

Fare well

Ahoy there shipmates. Today we have finally rounded the Cape and we have rendezvous'd for the last time with the USS Lexington, a fast-rigger of a ship of the line from the US navy and one that has done a fair bit of service hunting pirates. We have exchanged supplies and science and information here at the Galapagos islands with her captain, Captain Fitzroy, and so it is fare thee well to all the young american sailors on board that once great ship and we have just pulled up the anchor to bid our goodbyes this happy morn at dawn. She was a rugged and controversial ship and a young one of a young nation, but a solid friend of General Cornwallis, and a great help with regard to the Napoleonic pirates round about these southern seas. A great pity to see her go. Splice the mainbrace me hearties, tis a time for science. Fare well captain Fitzroy and the Lexington.

Splice the mainbrace

Anyway it is all a storm in teacup, that's what our mad captain calls this huge swell in the sea, and the ship like me old golden galleon of once upon a time at Sleaford is being smashed from pillar to post. Ah ahoy there lads on the crow's nest, do ye see those rocks off the Cape before we are all shipwrecked. Tis a long way from Portsmouth here me mateys. And a long way down to the sea bed. Alas alas, we are almost shipwrecked on these seas, and this is high summer for goodness sake. Emperor penguins galore that look like Napoleon in his pomp, but even they are looking a bit run down and scruffy and shady now. May the gods of the ancient seadogs help us through this. I hope that Wellington gets better weather than this for his invasion of Portugal and Spain and the Pyrenees.  Ahoy there shipmates.

Whoopsy daisy

Whoosh - a wave straight over me face at the captain's wheel. The closer we get to Antarctica the more heaving the seas become what with all this tossing and turning of the ship. The waves are huge the sea deep and much fomenting. And the weather is positively fulminous. Shocking stuff all this heaving seawater. Impossible to find our bearings some days and the nights are terrible too. We know that we are by-passing the Patagonia coastline of Argentina and Chile but tis mighty hard to keep this rudder straight in such seas. The French have disappeared again over the horizon and are heading maybe round the Cape. Back home in Portugal, the old Iron Duke is closing on the French troops. These latter are an illdisciplined lot that are always stealing pigs, and dancing on the bars of the cities they bother and destroy - a right lot of brigands and charlatans and ransackers if every we saw any. Anyway the local peoples and villagers have no time for the French. Freeloaders and batmouthers at the best of times. We have not seen as worse as these. The corvettes the SS Veinticinco de mayo and the SS Armada del sol are up ahead, from French-controlled Argentina. Must be out of here - captain on the bridge.

Thus far

Well me shipmates, shivver me timbers, here we are on the southern runs into the Tierra del Fuego and the Cape of Good Hope, which we shall have to round at some point, though it is a perilous sea journey. We are approaching via South Georgia where the biggest waves in the world are to be seen. Still pursuing the SS Hadden de Merdre and his sister ship the SS Shields de Warden. A long way from the land battles between Wellington and Napoleon this weather back in Europe on the Iberian peninsular. Wellington has landed some troops in Portugal, our oldest ally, and is busy setting upon the French Imperial Guard there. General Nuno de Bras is the leading general of the Portuguese Army. Doing well to contain Napoleon's heavy cavalry regiments. These tend to get stuck in mud.

Shinny up the rigging

The waters down here at this time of year are warmer than usual, a case of letting go in the calmer waters of the South Atlantic, much like the drink-sotten crew of the SS Venereale on their feast days of rum and bacardi and coke come 1st December each year. Wine and women and chaos for a whole day as the entire ship drops anchor usually in the West Indies and there lets go of all inhibitions. There is never an excuse needed for a party on board the SS Venereale. Capt Firestarter of the Old Nick, who is right up the charlies of the Venice Republic and its Navy, knows a good bargain when he sees one, no work, no tutoring, no tying of knots unless it is a clever double stitch in two directions, and lots of partying, lots of rum, and lots of girlie crewboys on board the ship. Oh yes there is nothing so pleasant as an all-nighter on those ships. La malaise republicenne. Capt Coc and Capt BC, known as the Couple on the the deck, or as 2 Jack Sparrows of the Venetian Republic, have lots of time for the crew, and there are lots of young blonde cabin boys carrying the drinks in and out of their Captain's burgundy carpeted Salonetta. Very nice indeed. The Venereale never sets sail though from the Bahamas and they never attend their lectures in Venice at the Navel Academy because the crew is perpetually drunk. 

Ahoy there laddies

Battling high seas down here below the Equator at the moment, on our way to Brazil but blown off course to St Helena where Napoleon will eventually die in exile and go to heaven or worse. Anywhere les franglais are like frogs really, they are always bleating and gulping at a fresh sea air that does not exist. The reality is very different, life is a constant battle out here on the waves, and the waves are permanent. Approaching St Helena. No sight whatsoever at the French end of things of some Tristan de Cunha, or even of our quarry the SS Hadden sur Rochelle which is a beefy 26 gunner and nimble on its feet like a ballerina from the Paris Rage-aux-Follies, but there ye go laddies, it is not every day we see action on the great unchartered seas to the south and the old jungles of Antarctica. Watch it lads, there be sea-monsters and all kinds of Leviathans and nessies down here. Ah sure, run up the mainsail, the beaches of Patagonia are covered with rotting dinosaurs like the old plesiosaurus me hearties. We hear things at night and we reads our sea-charts and our maps laddies, printed by an Italian called Vico. Good lads on board here, all press-ganged lads from the estates around Greenwich, and why the dickens not, lads who would otherwise have ended up in the riots or in the doldrums of unemployment. A bit of national service with the Royal Navy me hearties is no bad waste of the captain's rum. Better than handing over 40bn of the people's gold bullion to the French.

Sailing I am sailing

I am sailing, I am sailing, cross the sea, cross the sea. Yes I am sailing, stormy waters, I am sailing, to be free. Ahoy there shipmates, this be our song methinks captain, as the HMS Repulse takes another bow full of sea water and hits another wave and passes out of the harbour here in the Azores and presses on to the south and the west toward the forbidden and dangerous oh so dangerous coastlines of Brazil and the seal people of the hunting kind. Oh yass there shipmates, there be lions in them jungles in Brazil.

Ahoy there me shipmates

The trouble with pursuing the French and Spanish and Argentine navies of the Napoleonic Fleets is that they have a tendency to go aground down here in Latin America sounds, bays, and inlets. Difficult to spot.

These waves

These waves are pretty high but nothing to the high hillocks of sand and the smooth lines of the lovely sand dunes here in the Azores where the beaches go on for miles in silver sand. And there is the old portly marshall grey lifting a glass of his evening port, saluting the seagulls that occasionally drop itno his drink and caw their song - gaga gaga, and thus admiring the view of the isles of legend, while lovely Lena plays about on the dunes. A lovely girl that flitted across to the western islands once and never looked back. She is living here now permanently.