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.