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.