Aha me hearties

Aha me hearties, some action at last. We were sailing the seas off Sumatra, looking for the pygmies and cannibals of the islands, when we ran into a frenchman, a ship of the Napoleonic line, called the SS Foret Paisible, captained by a canny cannonaider called Capt Michel O'Murphy McCoy. A hard toing and froing, lots of very fast avoidance, zig-zagging galore, but we caught up with her and boarded her finally before sunset, and subdued the crew after much cutlass and musket work. Lots of gold on board. The sailors on board the Sovereign are mighty pleased me hearties. Even Cap Jack Ethan Hawke was toasting the men tonight over a glass of port and some captured camembert. A lovely skirmish. Very nice provisions too - lots of fresh fruit for the old scurvy. Lemons galore. Ahoy there shipmates. Grace a Dieu.

Nope

Nope there shipmates, the HMS Repulse has gone her way, so am now relegated on board the Sovereign, and we are hot on the heels of one of the great warships of the Napoleonic Fleet, the Roi du Soleil, captained by a dour and dubious frenchman called captain Janus de MacDonald, a name which means two-faced, a Scot drafted in to the enemy fleet at the last minute. He is assisted by his own able bodied seaman, chief petty officer, Jean-Luc de Sherrington. And these repair back and forth to Fleet headquarters at Biarritz where life is always wine, women, and song for the french captains and their naval officers. Cabin boys beware. A partying lot the venerable french crews on the Sovereign and they never miss an opportunity such as when their big Bastille Day comes round on the 1st December each year. Not that they celebrate it properly or with due regard for Marie Antoinette la comtesse di Albany and Brione de Bosey comte de Taunton who did go to the guillotine in a queste for dignity. A dreadful lot keen on hacking young innocent women to death in ecstasy driven parties.

Ah so ahoy

Ahoy there shipmates. Am adrift now on the high seas heading toward the islands of the deep south in Micronesia and approaching the coastline of New Zealand or Nova Terra as it once used to be called in the glorious days of Capt Cook. His ship is still moored out there somewhere gathering dust. Yes down here in the southern seas, it seems that some maps have gone out of print, and our sea charts are taking us toward an island that time has forgot, an island that was once jungle, and which hides the bones of huge leviathans. A creepy place, where rumours abound of old Dodo birds, like the Dodo I saw once in Oxford Schools tethered to a student who won it from a Dutchman back in the 1790s. This island here on the old sea charts is much confused with the old Terra Australis of Capt Cook and Ned Kelly. Is this the island that legend has forsook? Am making my way back to the barges of the grand Duke of the fleet, which is easier than trying to find my way back on board the HMS Repulse now. The Sovereign of the Seas is a nice ship, where the old seadogs greet me like an old veteran of the wars. Lucky I was accepted, and the captain is not so bad about it. Beagles ahoy. 

Phew rescued again

A close call. A Royal Navy frigate happened to be passing and has rescued me. I am back on board with my commission all shipshape. Ahoy me hearties. Saved from bloodthirsty pygmies led by a tribal chieftain called Dak es Salaam. A lucky escape. Some beads did the trick. Thank God the French left behind some rosaries on the beach in their quick getaway. I don't like the French but I do admire their courage when it comes to these micronesian indians. And the French do a bit of evangelising from time to time. But saved again. And soon I shall hope to rejoin the Repulse somewhere, once I have a cup of tea and a chitchat with the admiral on his schooner off the coast of Indonesia where he is looking in Sumatra for the last dodo bird. A tasty dish apparently. Anyway those fenchies are really amazingly courageous, the way they just swashbuckle straight on to these islands full of cannibalistic hungry native-indians, and impart their old pagan quasi-roman religion all over them. Anyway soon tea with the yellow admiral, a quick report into the sea lords, and then on to find the Repulse in this interminable war.   

Hey up, hey hoe

Hey up lads, wait for it, wait for me. Ye gads of the sailing ships, the 3 golden galleons are sailing away from me, and leaving me on this island in the south seas near Australasia and all its jungles. What now ye gads, what now? And so it was that our gallant sargeant at arms on board the HMS Repulse was left behind as the fourth man, by the very captains of the HMS Lancastrian Rose, the HMS Yorkist Hyacinthe and the HMS Repulse that he had served so faithfully during this terrible war with the Napoleonic Frigates, now to savour his own sea-salted fate, like a Saltheart Foamfollower, and to await the inevitable arrival on his beach of a tribe of pygmie indians of a distinctly cannibal hue, and looking very hungry even at this distance. RIP.

Freezing down here

God knows what brought us down here, chasing a difficult cuss of a couple of French frigates, the SS Neptune and the SS Nicholas des Bieres, and we can still see those frenchies dancing on the decks and cannons opposite, and then escaping after popping a cannonball through a Royal Navy mainsail. Auch aye me hearties tis shocking stuff, what these frenchies get up to on a sunday night down there in the southern seas, near the volcanoes of the southern islands around Australasia that Capt Cook discovered, and now, more action as we approach some french islands among the Micronesia Belt. What next? Galoots in galoshas? Maybe. Time will tell.