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.