Ahoy there captains

The captains of the high seas are sure-fire types laddies and they know their men and their maps. Like the captains of industry back home. We all say that a good career at sea is an excellent prep for a career at home in industry. More ships.

And one for the high waves

Day is ended, dim my eyes, the journey long before me lies ... A valediction today lads on the high seas as we bury at sea the crew of the mighty and venerable warship the HMS Ivo Carnutensis, a lovely battleship and a big waggon of a gunship, but which alas was sunk without mercy by a brigade of French corvettes, the SS Elfgarcon and the SS Ignace de la Potterie that had lain in wait near the estuaries of London for the poor doomed maiden of the high seas. Yes, we take off our caps to day and sing olden songs of Tom Bombadil and Bilbo Baggins for these great ships. She didn't stand a chance, once the French got wind of her whereabouts. And a duplicitous lot the French are. Bonaparte laughing as ever, all the way back to his parisen coffee taverns, but we shall remember these great ships in a line that saw action against the interminable revolution of 1789. The HMS Hudson, the HMS Jordan, the HMS Hadden, the HMS Montmogery, the HMS Bede, the HMS Sharks, the HMS Toffalino, the HMS Lynch, the HMS Gilmore. Gawd bless 'em all.

Well there ye go

Ahoy there shipmates. It is not often that out here on the high seas one comes across a real slip of a French corvette that likes to sing along on the surface like a flying fish, but the SS Vincent Van Gogh has come into sight and I can her red enseign fluttering now clear as day through my telescope up here in the crow's nest. A nice little mover with a yaw and a keel that slices the water and leans to the left in high winds. Well done to all the petty officers on the decks of the SS Van Gogh. A nice mover. And a nice lean to the left.

Hoist the stars and stripes mateys

Aha there lads, here we are on the high seas, and there is a ship over yonder that is having a right old party, what with a few sailors and their concertinas, and that ship, saving your pardon as I am looking down me telescope, yes that ships is the Fair old English Rose, the Royal and V&A, where the shipmates are all partying on brandy and rum. Grand old time, ship drifting but at least the ship's company is having a great old craic. Martyrs Day, we are told. Or some such old English festival, probably from the time when the country was catholic, and the diktator Napoleon hadn't turned up, seized the imperial French crown from the bishops of Paris and ordained himself!!

Ahoy there

Ah shiver me timbers lads, there's always some big brute out there, waiting for Royal Navy ships of the line, and I am heading to Scotland to see if I can rendez-vous with an old brig and its sea-dog captain, the young Capt Vincenzo and his team of petty officers. Oh yass, nothing to worry about except getting up there this summer, and the occasional French cruiser corvette, like the SS Brest and her sister ship the SS Westmonster, captained by those two skull and crossbone maniacs Capt Vincente le Terrible and his trusty steed Capt Dominique la Sterne-Liverpool. A right pair of sassy tarts of ships, but devilish on the Scottish run to oblivion.

And lo and behold

Ahoy there shipmates. Twas a real creepy night out there on the old sandbanks and fogs of the Solent, when we passed out into the Channel and found our way across to the Straits of Brittany, but there she was, loomed right out of the fog, all eerie and terrible to behold - a terrible beauty borne from old German naval yards - The USS Dusseldorf. A cruel captain beating and whipping his boys and his men for the sheer sake of it all, till they submitted to his iron will. The old Captain Fritz Dollinger was no softie, no dandy, and no gentleman's pleasure. Alas for his men and his gunnery.

Shinny up the rigging laddie

Ahoy there laddies and lassies. It's a good fast run down the coast of Africa, and there not long ago south of the old Tristan, we all caught sight  like ain a dream laddies of the finest sea-going vessel in the fleet of her majesty, the HMS Royale Venerabile - a beautous ship if ever I laid me eyes on a beaut. A Bute. Even more elegant than the HMS Anima. Ah now lads, there ain't no ship of the line like the Venerabile - she is a beautiful warship with 3 decks of big guns all down both sides. What we would all give to fly those lovely colours, that union jack to be sure to be sure, but also the little yellow borgia enseign out back. Ahoy there lassies - I would do anything for love lassies, but I wouldn't do that. Nope lassies, I won't be doing that lovely graceful ship of the line. And there ain't a better captain me hearties than chief captain Vincent de Cleves, a friend of Lady Hamilton, and his able assistant Count Niccolo di Monserrato, where those fine shipmen, the black Irish hail from.

Ahoy there lads in the Capricorns

Ah lads tis but a day and hike from the old Mount St Michael of Cornwall, a long ways back to those clement sweet green shores of the old islands, but the search must go on, some old warbanger of an old fighting ship called the Temeraire Hudson, still putting out for a fight that she cannot really win. No stomach for the long campaign see, and no real stamina for the long shot back home to some port in France. All these New France battlewaggons of old steamers are a bit before their time - very smokey and very dirty - if truth be told to an audience of the French Franglais in their chateaux. Vive l'empereur! the old Hudson and his petty officer Haddon will cry as they wave their tricorn hats, but truth is me hearties is that the old boyo Napoleon will not lose any sleep for such hard cases, too brave and too fast for their own good. Napoleon is a conservative, a coward in the real battles, who will simply slide home every evening for honey and tea, and his usual secret Remy Martin.

Ah truth to tell

Ahoy there lads, life on the high seas is not easy, but then life on land is no better, what with the lack of proper sewage treatment facilities and the like. Speaking of sewage, we came across two sewage boats recently, two old canal barges up and down the Thames for a living, but caught out on the squall in the North Sea, as brown as ever one will see. Yup the HMS Crowmead and the HMS Cheesle puzzlewhit are two old tugs that convey sewage abroad, chiefly offloading in Holland, if not Belgium.

Ahoy Ahoy when the sun

Ahoy ahoy when the sun was setting ... up here in the crow's nests after all, just looking out for the odd whale, spouting on the surface, and pumping out gallons of sea water into our faces here on deck. Nothing in sight - no moby dick from high up here - must be down below deep in the bluey depths of dark pacific water with all the blue whales - no white sperma whales for miles. The good ship USS Panspermia has not been seen down here in the waters north of Nova Australasia for some time. Its good captain, Horatio hornblower has gone the way of all flesh with chief petty officer Vincenzo and his able bodied seaman Recuerdo. Probably wrecked on some Fiji shore. Curiosity kills many an indiscreet cat, so bella giornata out the window. So it is Eliza Eliza for ho. Eaten alive by the natives or nibbled to death by some potty amazonian sisterhood tribe. Who knows? It is all a tragedy to see one's friends slowly being nuzzled and nibbled and consumed in a bloody fountain of gore. Kentucky FnC types might say - finger licking good, but let us spare a thought for a great seaman, Vincenzo de Lille and his batman Recuerdo el Cid. Fond thoughts for two sailors of the high seas that are now gone with the wind alongside Reg Butler. We will remember them. Fair thee well lost souls of the Falklands Isles or Islas Malvinas for the red enseigns - more enseign than red of course at the old tub HMS Veckerville. Good souls, lost souls, like the sailors of Farnese who lost their souls to many young syrens around Puerta Mayor.

Ahoy there 20-12

Aha me hearties, this is more like it, the life of the sails on the high seas, squaring off in the rigging, high in the crow's nest, like a couple of old sea dogs, Vin and meself, old veterans of the Cape of Good Hope. Aha yass me boyos there is no life like a big mainsail square-rigger at sea. No sight like the big seas off the coast of Ballycastle, Giants. And this boat, the Duke of Britanny is a fine dandy of a boat. Shame about the sister ship the HMS Venerabile which has been dogged by some big sheilas of storms this weather of late, this past year, lying up she is in dry dock with the SS Duke of Normandy, like an old corvette we used to know called the Guillaume le Conquistant, and now is reduced to a hospital ship near Newfoundland, whose banks are always threatening deep on the Hudson Bay River and muskets afew, bedad bedad. Ahoy there, must get off now, south seas approaching below the Azores and the big sandbanks are dead ahead. Ahoy there captain Hudson and the good midshipman on board the HMS Edmund Campion.

Aha me hearties

Ahoy there shipmates. Tis a black day for the consciences of those evil French captains of those French corvettes over there. They have put into harbour at Brest and found lots of scurvy and legionnaire's disease on board the SS Hudson Huron, the SS Milner Bird, the SS Dingley Tilney, and the Murfax O'Cuivehan, while the dirty old tug and steamer, the French SS Chestleton is still belching out its black smoke all over the islands to the north at Guernsey. Dreadful business all this disease at the port au prince on the SS MV Venerabile QV - a russian corvette in port at the old stopover for the French generals, the St Malo. Anyway we shall head out to the grey Atlantic soon.

Aha Robinson Crusoe

Well ye gads men, shivver me timbers, we have alighted by a desert island in the middle of the ocean not far from the Maldives, and there facing us are two old hasbeens waving their arms and asking for food and freshwater. Poor buggers. Chestleton Brigadier and his batman and his fag Nickelarse Fickleby, both old seadogs from the wreck of a big old glorified tug called the HMS Venerabile, so they say. The captain has gone through his old sea logs and discovered that no such ship ever appeared in battle for the Royal Navy. Maybe a russian man o'war possibly that puts in to these southern harbours for the young girls and some sailor relief. Shivver me timbers, tis two old seadogs from Russia. Special recruits from their university days. And very nicely done, on Crispian's Day too. Still under orders probably - we shall line them up and shoot them. A whole crowd of them slipped out from a mutinous ship in the East India Company once I do recall. Capt Horatio.

Well shivver me timbers

Well there shipmates, it seems that the old tug, the MV Crowmack has pulled out of the French ports of Brest and is heading out in the grey Russian Atlantic to rendezvous with a crowd of Frenchies in their corvettes, including the MV Sherington, a two tonner that likes firing everywhere with lots of loose cannon on deck, the MV Hudson, an old warhorse that loves the sound of her own artillery and gunpowder going off, and the MV Wincanton from ashore at Doylieville who just loves. People mostly. As long as they buy into that infernal 1789 revolution that keeps going off around Europe like some lunetune Marshall Ney. oh and there is the MV De Buicklear O'Donnell, the famous ship built in Ireland but working against the Anglo-Irish Empire of Wellington for the lunatic corporal from Corsica and GBH. So we might deploy the HMS Chestleton against this little coterie of coquettes from Cocove soon, and see what happens to their bright napoleonic smiles on their french faces. Or is it?

Aha

Ahoy there maties. Captain on the bridge. Whistleblowers in town, that old sea-dog Captain Jean d'arc de Chastelain is now back in British waters, roving around, firing off his gun at small turrets and towns, and generally running amok and ravaging little inlets on the coastline. A payne in the neck. One of Napoleon's Chompollions if not champignons. Which is where he should be - stewed in a risotto for his paynes. A right charlie we have as our admiral this week - cannot find this scheming miscreant and olde worlde artefact. A dreadful lot, the french.

Golly gosh

Gosh, these French corvettes have some nerve, sailing into British harbours at Falmouth, and announcing their retirement like the old Temeraire being nudged into port by the tugs on the south coast. Defection one supposes. But anyway, the old sailing ship, the last of the line, the SS GK Chestleton has at last put in, and announced its defection to the Royal Navy. So parties at Mansion House, London tonight, one supposes. The Duke of Wellington will be there, toasting another defector from the French Navy.

Ahoy there shipmates on the shipman

We have come across the old bulk of a great hulk adrift on the high seas. It looks like the SS Great Britain, once built by Isumbard Kingdom Brunel, and seems to be full of coals for Glasgow. Nobody on board except for an old sea dog that has gone gaga called Captain Murphy VC DSO CH. Says he is the last survivor of a long line of old seadogs from Co Cork and Montinotty. But full of gibberish poor old blighter. Says all his seamen jumped overboard one by one. Could not put up with the pressure of all of his Glasgow coals. He says his trusted amanuensis was Capt Chestikov, an old Russian hand at his helm that he has trusted for many years in an orange scarf and four-quarter hat, he also jumped over-board too in a storm and swam away to a desert island with a haversack containing all of Capt Murphy's collection of old songs from Co Cork with the addresses of all his old friends there from Bunratty and the old Blarney's castle. Capt Murphy is distraught - he never really wanted to betray all his old friends - not really. But there you go, that's what happens when the Russians old style take over an old Glasgow steamer like this one full of old coal. His chief petty officer Sir Paul Gilhooley too has gone the way of old flesh and jumped into the sea too and is now on the same desert island with Mr Chestikov as his Man Friday. Don't like fish though. Sad. Capt Joe Keenan too jumped overboard - too much coal. The SS Opus magnum is the sister ship now pulling alongside to rescue that old wreck.

Shivver me timbers

Well there's a sprightly lass, somat we could never say around Anglesey these days, but out here in the southern waters, we have just run into a big old fat tugboat freighter thing, called the MV Chestikov, which is advertising its wares as oily fish, but actually on closer inspection is just another tub from a banana republic offering bananas to Africans. No change here on these Russian or shall I say Hanseatic ships bound for exotic ports in Africa. Good on slaves though. The captain says he speaks English, but it is all broken Russian and Portuguese. The usual freight. Nothing ever changes in southern Russia on the Black See.

Auch aye ahoy there

Well here we are approaching the coast of Albany upstate, hunting the SS Antoine Petit Pince-Nez, which has been hounding our traffic for sometime between Canada and Britain, and this lean-to frigate is captained by a very able seaman called Capt Antoine du Fromage, a stickler for discipline and routine, but who is keen on firing broadsides at the east coast of the American colonies. A troublesome chap this one. Educated far beyond his ability at the Naval College at La Rochelle, and an all-round payne. Like the sailors on the ill-fated Neptine he has a titanic opinion of himself. Terentius the poet would agree.

Ahoy there

Ahoy there shipmates. It's a long haul back to the Canadian reefs and shrimp beds of home sweet home. Yes aye we have a long way to go on the HMS Repulse. And we have taken our fair share of the odd grapeshot from the French and their ongoing and interminable revolutions. We have just missed two frigates steal out by night from the waters of the Galapagos Islands, in hot pursuit of Capt Fitzroy. These two fast attack boats, a solid idea for our own coastal defences back home, called the SS Bon Nuit and the SS Brione de Brioche, are a very fast couple of cutters that know how to make their escape from our long range guns. We shall leave them at it till the southern lights of the aurora australialis arrive. Adieu my fine weather but feathery friends.

Well ahoy there

Well ahoy there lads, shivver me timbers, tis a grand high sea out there tonight. Huge waves crashing over the decks of the Repulse, and just ahead of us wrestling with mighty seas, there is the SS Hudson River and the SS Hadden de Nouveau Maulden, a tiny speck of a couple, mere jetsam and flotsam actually now in a great grand sea, full of the usual leviathans, this pair sporting Brit colours but looking decidedly french below decks. A two-faced lot the french navy. Frenchies beware. Even napoleon wd despair of this couple.

Ahoy ahoy

Ahoy there shipmates of the HMS Boulavogue and HMS Tipperary, tis time we all packed up our kitbags and got into the fair winds that will blow us across the Atlantic and into calm waters in the Us colonies. Lovely weather here and tis mete to find a little landfall at the Azores. We'll all be singing It's a Long Way to Tipperary by teatime. The old napoleon is probably hiding up the Hudson river this weather. He always hightails it out to the French colonies when he is bombarded.

Well well well

Well my hearties and shipmates we are pressing north now into the mellowest of yellow seas, the South China Seas, in the footsteps of the great explorers of once upon a time like Marco Polo, who had to survive so many ambushes and prison sentences from dubious westerners and travellers of an Irish and French kind that it is a wonder he ever made it to China. His memoires he wrote in prison. We are hot on the tail of another ship of the Napoleonic hordes, a square rigger called the SS Adrienne Toffeenose and another bigger belle called the SS Aoife Kennedy, as the franglais delight in naming their warships after French and Irish defectors and wannabes. Irish defectors to the armies and navies of Napoleon alas are endemic, and they do their country no service, as they brownnose their way to the top in Paris. These two belles above have put in a lot of damage over the years especially to one of our newer ships the SS Garde le Foi, and an older ship the Fay ce que, which we have given French names though these are just epithets which mirror the dedication on the house of Lady Foyle of Londonderry. Ahoy.

Shiver me timbers shipmates

Ahoy there shipmates. Well we have got a good run all the way up the Australian coast and we are in hot pursuit of one of the last of the franglais corvettes, a lean mean little number called the SS le Riviere Hudson, some name that alludes to the 7 year French-Indo Wars in Canada I am told, but this one is camouflaged heavily in a light gray deck paint, which is newer than the usual black bitumen one gets on franglais ships, and served by its very foolishly devoted young capitaine Capt Stefane le Midget Catamite who is a franglais, an englishman gone over to the French scivvies of the tyrant Napoleon, and who therefore merits the ultimate penalty  for betraying his country and his sovereign to the mad republic of potty little corporal Napoleon and his lunatic general Marshall le Ney. Je touche. Yes the ultimate penalty because these young boys that love the puritannical black and white and no colours of Nappy's Republic forget that the duty to serve one's own country is a solemn one imposed by God, king harry, and St George. They just cannot just slide off to some retard puritannical guillotine banana ridden republic where everyone is as bald and naked as coots and serve revolution that never ends in the usual bloodbaths of guillotine mad Napoleon. It is an Aztec culture in which they all dine out on others in the French naval colleges of La Rochelle, wherein no building of their own career seemingly occurs without the demolition of other innocent careers, but it is a pitiless one and one devoid of all human compassion for the souls of the ordinary man as well as of the rich and the petty bourgeoisie. A sad day for the king, and a black day for us.

Aha me hearties

Tis rough on these high seas north of Darwin. We never seem to catch up with the double-dealing French in their dastardly navy, and we know that our target ship today, the SS Andrea de Haddon is secretly transmitting messages and information on RN ships back to Napoleon hidden in his red nay purple velvet coach and bunker and seated among his burgundy chaise longues. Ah yes, the SS Haddon is a double dealing sort of frigate that has often explained its position as lying off some coast or other near Darwin but in fact is up north in the salonettas of the ports of the China Seas like Macao pouring out its guts to to some corvette from Napoleon. And then there is that total cretinous captain of the New French Navy, Capt Inigo de Botelier, who seems to think that Napoleon respects englishmen who go over to his dark black fleets. So Napoleon is not as orthodox or as respectable as he looks, and his navy blue frock coat is a farce and a fiction as he lets go with his grey jacket in private and looses cannonballs on unsuspecting boys of the Greenwich Naval Colleges while they are saying their christian prayers in their private collegiate chapels on their ships. A real dastardly and mutley couple this one, Haddon and Napoleon, and all festooned by the egit right wings of Paris as heroes of the new right and as orthodox defenders of the old 1789 franco-prussian revolution they offiicially dress up for. Like the SS Down-on-Connor captained by her ladyship Lady Emma Hamilton de Foxe MacDonald.

Ahoy there ships of the line

Ahoy there, well here we are sailing the seven seas down under not far from the islands of Tasmania where me old mate is, Capt Eric on board the HMS Livingstone, and here we have run into two beautiful ships, the SS Conry and the SS Caustic, two french vessels that have been working together for some time down here in the Antipodes chiefly to unseat Crown interests. Nice frigates both, and it seems a shame to have to sink them both, but they were active all over the old Victory-like warship the HMS Seagull and pummelled her shore and aft till she was much reduced in the water, thoug hshe gave a jolly good account of herself. The Seagull though is not good at confronting revolutionary dogma and the gendarmarie that always accompanies the French in their subterfuges, chiefly from Napoleon, who is still deceiving British shipmen. Arrogant lot the French though, they always assume they have the last laugh and the last cannonball, but they neglect the finer arts of war and they spend too much time in Chinese ports, drinking themselves silly on martyrs's days come the 1st of December, but NB surrounded by lots of Chinese junks. Chinese failings for the most part. Can't see the future.

Shivver me timbers laddies

Ooh it's a cold night out here on the high seas laddies and me hearties, out on the big waves of the big seas north of Micronesia as we head away from the Dak tribes of Borneo. Ah yes, there's lots of things that a sailor in the crow's nest sees at night time. Leviathans we used to call them, these dinosaurs or plesiosaurs or sea monsters whatever ye like. Great big things stirring the depths of a man with fear. And only at night will these babies surface. So only a sailor on duty at nightwatch on the crow's nest will see these things. And only in moonlight. A bit like the old French monster the SS Roi du Soleil captained by that raucous oaf Capt Jean-Luc de Hadden of Haddenham, a traitor. By all definitions of treason this was a bad-un, as he slipped out of the Naval College by Greenwich Harbour, slithered down the quayside, and passed into the sea and across to Napoleon near Charleroi by Belgium. Treason is still on the older statute books, whatever they say in prior Moscovite Wootton & Cork, but at end of day it is not about the burning down of naval dockyards or the lynching of an innocent, or the wearing of swords in chains, but about fighting in the armies of the enemies of the king, a once and a future king. Shivver me timbers lads, 'tis shocking lonely on this crow's nest.