Aha 1815

Aha so there it is. Captain on the bridge! Square up the mainsail! All hands on deck! We have just sighted Capt Jack Sparrow and his black evil ship the 25 gunner, the SS Black Pearl, cruising smoothly and silently through the calm waters of the southern Caribbean. Ah yes, the infamous pirate ship, the Black Pearl, and full of cut-throat pirates and blood-soaked cutlasses. And himself, evil Capt Jack with his cockney estuary accent. So it is all hands on deck because he never misses an opportunity to raid a Spanish gold ship or even from time to time attack a Royal Navy tea clipper - a bit on the savage side is evil Capt Jack. He is probably cruising these southern warmer seas looking for his favourite Golden Hind. Or some fair spanish square rigger to raid, board, and plunder to his heart's delight. He may even be looking for a lovely tea clipper out of Penzance called the HMS Queen of Hearts. Now there's a bootiful clipper if ever I saw one.  Very lean and very fast, and always on the way to New Spain with her spanish capitaine.

Navy slang - 1812

1812 overtures very welcome at the moment. Chief petty officer on the poop deck - ahoy there - look lively. A snowball knot sometimes occurs in the world of midshipman duties. A knot that comes apart in the heat of the sun. Likewise some of the finest looking ships on the high seas like the HMS Burco and the USS Buick look great, as clean and as polished a hull as would exist on a Waverley steam engine livery badge, but they can find the heat of battle a little bit too much, and such is the moment for a quiet withdrawal from the front lines of conflict and war and essaye. Some foreign French napoleonic warships do pack a big punch, like the SS Kungfeld or the SS Chur or worse the SS Rathaus - old worthies that know the seas around Europe and can lead younger ships like the HMS Whitman and the HMS Fairhead into choppy cross-currents from high command. Oh yass, the Burco and the Buick can be undone on the high seas of artillery and cannonade exchanges. And there are some Caliphate barges that do put out of Spanish Morrocco and Libya and Algeria that we should be taking a second look at, as they tend to crowd their decks with thinly disguised Sultan Mahmoud marines and have now discovered the uses of gunpowder and other explosives. Young ships and young crews from the Royal Yards at Greenwich and Chatham do beware. These are old arab-hugging tugs that do not mind getting dirty in the smoke of combat - very dirty - like the MV Simmonds or the MV Clothier.

1804

Well shiver me timbers maties, I am sailing the seven seas again on a high square rig and waiting for the wind to puff up these topsails, and what do I see in the crow's nest, but another square rigger at full speed, a tea clipper. These boyos from the Academie Francaise in Paris under Napoleon never seem to know what is not good for high wind conditions like today. It is almost as if they had not learned from their dreadful results at the Officer School at Brest. The last 3 candidates for the second from top title in the program, the SS Power, the SS Arnold, and the SS McGuckian only scraped passes - probatus, and none of the credits or distinctions of which they boasted they were going to get - probatus, not even been probatus, and not even a magna or a magna cum laude and no summa cum laude in sight, so I am afraid the captains from the Officer School at Brest are not as inspiring as they say they are. A disappointing lot these napoleonic frenchies.

Aha the Repulse

This beauty of a square rigger that is the fastest tea clipper on the high seas is called the Repulse - she is not so bad eh me hearties? Not so bad at all shiver me timbers!!

The USS Lexington

Ahoy there captains and sea lads and cabin boys. Funny thing to find an american colonies ship right there among the scheming cunning French and their corvettes the SS Venerabile and the MV Walt Whitman, but there ye have it me hearties, two bald as a coot corvettes with the old smokey USS Lexington giving them away and nothing between them and the deep blue sea bed but our own set of guns if not a brace of lifeboats. Not that such boats would save this lot, since the crew of these two ships spend so much time invoking satanic powers against the glory and pride and power of the Royal Navy. The king George III is unhappy at the moment, as he cannot see any progress in this naval war against Napoleon's useless flotillas. These navy lads of the Revolution of 1789 offer no consolation to anyone found at sea and always execute their prisoners, even the angels and ladies of the deep known to us as refugees. A shocking wicked lot of charlatans who do not believe in any common decency which is all we expect of a minuteman at sea when victorious over some poor unsuspecting lay square rigger. A wicked lot - there is no solution nowadays but just to fire on sight whenever they are glimpsed on any horizon, even off the coast of Ascension Island or the Falkland Islands where we have sent many prussian ships to the bottom like the Gneisenau and Scharnhorst and Tipper in the days of our earlier wars against the Franco-prussian alliances. Adieu as we say now when we are sinking venerabiles, though there is nothing venerabile about this modern generation. Sensitive lot on the subject of little cherubs we call children. And very sensitive on the subject of infant democracies.

Ahoy - 25 mayo 13

In the crow's nest the sun is a terrible woe - scorches the shirt of your back me hearties. Shivver me timbers would be better. And look there is the old warboat tug the SS Aurora still pulling out and sailing the 7 seas with captain Christopher on board and his petty officers and largely african crew. A bit of a slave trade merchantman that one it has to be said, but hearken, tis the old flag of Republican France and the colours of Napoleon fluttering there from the stern and not the Royal Enseign. Behind is her sister ship, the SS Rosie-crucia and two escort corvettes from the French navy, the SS Angel and the SS Revolution, always with a full compliment of French republican marines. Quite a little flotilla this one. Still we might give them a run for their money and deploy the HMS Archangel - she has a full complement of cannonry - with her escort man of war the HMS Osterreich.

Ahoy

Well me hearties, we are on the rudder today, steering the HMS Repulse through unchartered waters in the southern seas to the south of Tasmania where the young devilish captain Eric D'Arcy is pilotting a curious rag bag of ships in his colonial flotilla. His own old tugboat cum flagship of the Hudson is the SS Paedoscare was originally commissioned in Germany on the coast at Kiel not a million miles from Bonn, where a secret meeting of old guard shipwrights put together a plan to blow a hole in the western navies of UK & Ireland, and these seadogs were fighting like the doyliedog seapitbull terrier of a tug as ever for the grey longcoats of the avid Russians and the pot-boiler French. The old Prussian general Blucher would have turned in his grave had he ever found about this little secret group of seadogs and their boys who wished to plunge the western navies into crisis not once but every week if not every year. Funny how little cunning napoleons blackmail whole nations and alliances into crisis. Funny how old German admirals should know better than to traduce their own alliance and their own country, but these grey higgs-bosons were on the up and up and wanted to make a name for themselves and their old grey Russian longcoats and liberal friends of Le Terreur of 1789. Revolutions - who actually needs them!!

Alors

Have got Captain Le Vin here in the Captain's mess and shortly we shall go for a short stroll around the poopdeck here on HMS Repulse. He is tired and needs a break, and I am encouraging him to splice the mainbrace a little when he sails out of port today at Capetown and off to calmer waters than these. In his own flotilla he has too many French spies for Napoleon - this is his problem.

Shivver me timbers

Well well there's a hapless tug of a barney if ever I saw one, the USS Admiral James Butt, founding ship of the argentine navy one day they say, high-tailing it away from the Newfoundland sandies and bars and banks up the St Lawrence River with the USS Jeremy Hudson. Two american corvette square riggers that have been hanging around the stricken and sinking USS Lexington this last week around the coast of North Carolina, while she has been offloading men and materielle for Washington. A sad and sorry tale that only the HMS Lavinia can tell, with due apologies lads to Signor Shakespeare.

All Hail

Hail to the mighty Temeraire, a lovely ship worth every penny of the huge oak beams on board that great hulk, that great bulk. Today we are pulling alongside a stricken vessel, the SS Vincenziana that is fresh out of the port of Venice, but has been leaning to for some time, on account of the heavy coals in the store down below, in the keep of the keel. An old waggon of a workhorse, she has been in and out of so many Med ports and Arab ports now at this late stage of her life, that she is looking very old and grey, and very weathered, since those arab ports take so much out of an old waggon. Cairo a favourite stop with the MV Fitzgarrat, but she has worked on the coals to Newcastle run for so long, that nobody can recall what she is and who she is, though she just keeps thumping tubs and tugs to recognise here in an aggressive display of false flags, and her captain, Johann the Swabian keeps insisting that she brave one more trip out there in the real world and that she consigns all unruly boyish sailors on board to the gulags of the plains of Siberia, not that there are many left there. She hopes to continue opening accounts in China though, and with the emperor's help to continue running her gulags there for naughty schoolboys and scallywags and ragamuffins from the mean streets of Britain. All face the gulag on board that old tugboat.

A flagship

Shivver me timbers lassies, there is a big bottomed lady of the lines if ever I saw one, not a Spanish Hind full of new world gold amazingly, but a tea clipper selling lots of tea as coffee in far-flung ports like Dublin, and adding in their own share of sheep's dung for flavouring in Russian taverns. Yes the USS Macdonald of the line is no Lexington, that's for sure, but boy does she move fast around the globe, but always selling tea as coffee. Learnt nothing from the buddha or his buddhist monks at how to make red robe tea, but maybe tea there at home in China is too expensive for her. Captained by a loose rag-bag assortment of sailor boys, press-ganged from Russian ports, she stays afloat by laying up for days at ports like L'eau vive in Switzerland. Money her only downfall - shed-loads of it and which she shells out to all the sailor boys of the French cinque ports.

Ye gads

Well Oi, as they say on the Algarve coast, splice the old rum sailors on the high seas, here we are coming into port today near the Azores, and there are a couple of old Russian freighters in dry dock, the MV Crippin and the MV Gabrielavich, nightmares to follow these two ships, and very fast on foot, despite their very wide keels, and wider bows. Lost at sea these types for much of the year, always on Awol alert, but somehow seem to turn up on the French side of every debate and every argument in every alehouse. Two Russian tugs really, pushing old coal about for most captains, but these two captains do know how to talk the hind legs off a donkey. Captain Willy She's-your-Man Doyle is the captain of the MV Gabrielavich and Capt Francesca Higgins-Boseyon is the captain of the second ship the MV Crippin. A first for the Russian navy - a woman that doesn't look like a man. A right pair of Russian old guard retards. HMS Repulse sounding out and away onto the 7 seas.

Aha - land ahoy

Aha am up in the Crow's Nest today lads and lassies of the line, and it is a great view up here. And splice the mainbrace, but that is land-ho, westwood ho. And there is a Usa ship that has just put into shore as well in the Bay, and it looks like the USS Remington Lancaster with her sister ship the USS Davey Crockett, nice and cosy like, in at the shore, taking on supplies and speaking to the natives of the South Sea Islands. American sailors on board in plentiful numbers, atop the decks wide open, with lots of white uniform. Oh yes the captain of the USS Remington is a very famous captain that always goes into London's west end on his shore leave every month, Captain Willie Dobbie Doyboy. Lovely guy and very well liked by the lads of the night in the centre of London's Jermyn Street. Very very popular this one. The captain of the USS Davey Crockett is less well known but a real firebrand at that sabre of his, a real slapdash hand at the old war cutlass, but very close to his captain, american Dosh Doyboy.

Odd

Ahoy there shipmates. Funny thing about these Carricks that sail around the Bay of Biscay and around Cadiz, as they all sport English colours, and are English built, but are owned by Dutch privateers and are often seen high-tailing it over the Barents sea to Murmansk after another successful season pirating from the various ships around Port Royal and the Bahamas. We have not made up our minds what to do with such corvettes and frigates, like the couples, the SS Hudson and SS Fairweather and then the SS Castleton and SS Haddon, but sooner or later Royal Navy Command at HMS Davenport by the Greenwich Naval College will tire of these posings as the very British they are actually raiding. Russians - evidently for a very very long time. HMS Castle Riding required - at least the old HMS Waterloo was dependable.

Time's up

Ahoy there lads, tis time for 3 bosons to consider the big step, walking the plank on this ship, the HMS Repulse. Captains Corbrac, Vinnie-J and Doyliebore have to consider that treachery and treason do not pay and that they are no longer wanted on the warships of the Royal Navy, especially seeing as they always go over to Napoleon's fleet every night after port when nobody in the RN is looking. And worse of all, feeding the evil POWs below decks - the most heinous treachery for these mucksters and gameshow hosts. They have taken to that Boney old corner far too often me hearties, and now 'tis time to walk that plank and feed the sharks below. Ahoy there!! Planks away.

Ahoy there me hearties

Oh yass lads and lassies of the poop deck, that was some big blow in from the South China seas, with a queer lot of cabin boys washed overboard before the captain could save those little oriental legs. A grand shame and a great loss to the Navy at this time when they is needed for the Boxer rebellion I shall say. Also the gods of Neptune are naught on these trips this weather - a right evil sea of evil intent - a troubled ocean and huge waves as high as houses rising above and over the decks. Ye crikes, ye gads, these are not grand waters for an old essex man like meself. We shall shortly be approaching San Francisco Bay me hearties and we shall put in there for a day and a jog and see what we can do to replenish our stores. Capt Peter Joseph on the deck now. A likely lad.

Ahoy me hearties

Oh yass, that was no fitting end for dear old Capt Bryant, lost overboard in the rivers of the Amazon and the south seas, while trying to save the old ship, HMS Venerabile. A bad day for business on the high seas. No trace of the old captain since found, but one never knows, maybe he ended up with the islanders on their big canoes and boats deep inside the coastline of Brazil. So we shall not see his like again me hearties, save maybe surrounded with garlands and enjoying his new life.

Ahoy there

Here we are taking soundings from the old plumbline as we approach canadian waters me hearties, me lads, me old herrings, me old soused scads. Not canada as such of course ye will understand - this is New Scotland but there are some Frenchies and bald hurons around, like the shipmates on the HMS Venerabile over yonder, if that is a real Royal Enseign they is flying. Bald as bats, deaf as coots. Terrible predicament. Lost their captain overboard, Capt Bryant, in a river-fight with the local indian innuit eskimo natives. Buried at sea - presumed dead. Vicar on board conducted the service. Venerabile distraught - like they knew the guy, like the married the chief petty officer or somat. Or somat. Up the hudson river now - sailed away maybe.

Splice the mainbrace

Ahoy there shipmates and mateys of the foredeck, 'tis time to put out to sea again in search of all them Spanish galleons full of the gold of the Aztecs. A shocking business, doing in the Aztecs just for their gold. But helas me shipmates such is the greed of the French and the ambition of the Spanish, to have killed an entire unspoilt Adam and Eve nation and its lovely pristine empire just to steal their gold and have their beautiful wives subjected to their allies, the Arab slave-traders of Mozambique, and today we are off on the high seas in search of two French corvettes working with the Spanish, the SS Marcus Tullius and the SS Andronicus Hadden, and these blighters, shipmates if you will believe me, are shifting a lot of stolen second rate gold around the Golden Carib. Ahoy there shipmates.

Ah the old HMS Cheshire Cheese

Ahoy there lads, there never was a ship like the old HMS Cheshire Cheese, and her captain, the able Capt Shackleton, the real one from Elton Hall, but helas ghosted these many years by the flagship of the French Napoleonic Forces, the SS Fromage de Cheeslecake, captained by a long-serving Russian called Dimitriov Aurora, who spent all his formative years spying on the Royal Navy from Cambridge to Germany and on then to the waters of the Med where he used to meet his handlers near Turkey on board the Russian steam packet cruiser the SS Casaroli while ostensibly dropping flower petals to war graves on Skyros. Ah yes the Cheshire Cheese was much shadowed, and we do say shadowed, and ghosted by this Black Pearl low life soviet-style captain of the old Hanseatic Navy in olden days before the war, churning up the waters of the Scottish coast and stopping often at Ullapool to pick up his trinkets, before Napoleon crowned himself in Paris by robbing the crown from the hands of the archbishop of Paris. Before Wellington finally brought the old lowlife flotsam of France to book at the Battle of Waterloo - with the aid of the Prussian General Blucher. Napoleon was captured fleeing from the Battle in his red riding hood cape and cloak, hiding in an ornate carriage while the little remnant of his surrounded Imperial Old Guard faced the final request for surrender, and on refusal, duly were executed by the victorious allied forces in a final musket volley. Ahoy there lads, that old boot, was something of a neck - he pushed his luck all his miserable squat self-important life. And others paid the price of his egotism.

A wreck

So there it is as we are passing over an old naval graveyard - the Wreck of the Deutschland. A nice smooth lean ship but a bit shallow in the draught, though the shipbuilders that laid her up at Kiel always said she was built for speed. A nice ship that was oft seen on the Northern Runs to the Hanseatic ports and then in later life on the runs to Saudi Arabia. Shame she went down at the end of her life with all hands on deck. The captain was a nice enough sort of chap, Captain JR Ewing O'Shaughnessy, but he was from Hannover and into all the usual trappings of German high careers, chiefly duelling with swords, so a bit of an old-fashioned aristo. Yes a sad day for General Blucher of the Prussian Home Guard and his uffiziellen such as Captain Siegen, and Captain Shallenberg, when they lost all overboard in the Wreck of the Deutschland. Shame. JR RIP.

Aha BC RIP

Ah now lads, ah now lads, there was a mighty Temeraire if ever I saw one, the HMS Chestleton RIP whose passing below the waves we commemorate this year. She was a mighty waggon built for speed, and there lay her eventual problem. Her crew were hyper-active, they did not believe in legitimate response, and the captain was always trying to anticipate the French rather than follow them and respond accordingly. A nice ship the Chestleton and much given to 21 gun salutes whenever she saw her queen, the young Victoria, and even in her young days, the young William IV. Ah yes a mighty warship retired often though somewhat prematurely when it was thought that steam fighting ships after the USS Lexington would take over the high seas, but she saw action here and there. An honourable member of the Royal Over-Seas League, the headquarters of which her captain, the young Cormac le Vincent and his chief petty officer Patricke le Venerable, often visited in London, and much given to supporting our Russian allies on the Royal Hannoverian Hanseatic League Run. Greenwich Naval College and the Chatham Shipbuilders will miss this one. HMS Chestleton RIP. Sad to see her go, but she was sunk when hit in the midships, just as she was approaching her home port of Milford Haven. Caught by a French skip. Anyway, a sad day for all concerned.

Capt Fitzroy

Ahoy there me hearties. Now there never was a finer captain on the seven seas than the old master of the brig called the SS Cheesle Hypertwin than the Lord high maestro on the rigging, Capt Fitzroy. A real smoothie from Greenwich Naval College himsell, and something of a songster too from a small village in Littlehampton near Wayward Heath. A grand stropping brusque of a petty officer and a great old boy at the soundings when plumblining the fathoms as the brig approached the terrible reefs and rocks off the sounds of Cornwall. Terrible reefs those ones lads, and many a small ship has been buggered by them there rocks to the south. Lulworth Cove and there's a jiffey.