Ahoy there

We'll shiver me timbers ye old sea dogs of the high waves, there is a rumbling out there beyond port this day, and must rigout this ship and ready her for the southern seas, around the cape and on to the Tierra del Fuego. Soon here on board this mighty man of war, the HMS Roger de Whittaker, all will be readied soon for those brackish waters. We reckon we shall have a right royale battle around the Falklands before the summer is out, while we pursue two corvettes of the napoleonic French. The SS Whit de hueck and the SS Brest have fled with Capt Tomcat Hopkins de Maryland south from the Caribbean.

Eyesore

We'll jaysu up the kyber pass we are, as we come into very stagnant waters indeed in the Arabian Sea, where we have spotted brazen as a whore in Tehran 3 frigates the burkino fasso and the fly by night and right up the rear of the first is the MV deep throat cheesle. 3 old tugs but mutton dressed as lamb. Being in Arabian seas these 3 catty sarx are used to Tunisian tugs giving them a nice shunt from behind rather than the usual pulling in a Dead Sea, but they are now staffed by a ginsa crew that is by a crowd of slave traders of the dark side. Like nappy napoleons these crews are not fighting just with human physical weapons but like diseased orcs they chain young democracies to the underworld of nappy rebellions. Like napoleons himself these are used to kids.

Well shiver me timbers

Well lads and lassies out on the high seas this week, there is a calm sea out there on the Tyrrhenian Sea and we is becalmed my beauties off the straits of Messina and Calabria - the very place where the good ship HMS Germaine was lost some years ago along with all her virtuous cargo. Still that does not stop the odd approach of some old tugboats of the French napoleonic line, the SS Lynchmob and the SS Nadine, two corvettes of the line in France who sometimes cruise this way. Rarely it has to be admitted since they have nothing in common with the Romans and the Latium Italicans, and they have no time for the pomp of such places being simply liveried like a very wooden galleon of Columbus - where their captains stay when they are in Rome. Oh yes tow old dirty tugboats - mutton dressed as lamb.

Dream on

Well there is nothing like sailing the high seas in the high summer, when the great tufts of white water make a lovely contrast to the deep blue of the waters against a blue azure sky. Yes me hearties such is sailing in the high summer. But what is this, an old ship, a cutty sark, has now steered into my eyeglass, and I can see it from a distance, a polish ship but made out as a prussian blucher style corvette with a good few guns, more than expected, and it is labelled the SS Stan le Can, a fine square rigger and what a professional crew and a tidy ship. This one is quite famous among the crews of the Napoleonic Wars because this one booted old Boney's best ship, the SS KGB out into the North Atlantic to be picked up and ravaged and wrecked by some prussian fast attack patrol frigates, led by the legendary destroyers of some swiss rebel gunners like the MV Kungfeld and the MV Schonheit, and these super class prussian destroyers were the SS Clematis and the SS Leylandii. Lovely ship the SS Stan le Can.

Aha ahoy there captains

Ahoy there me hearties and me shipmates. Out here on the coast south of Charlestown where all the tall ships are harboured nowadays and heading off into the sunset of another southern sea journey soon. But what is this - two schooners from the court of king napoleon - the SS Sherington and the SS Hudson Bay, baying at our Royal Enseigns and fluttering french and red colours on their skips, barely more than two chinese junks floating on the usual sea of debris left behind by the napoleon flagship the SS Charlatan.

Ahoy

It is 1817 and it is just a two years after the mists have cleared from the hillsides of Waterloo where Wellington our general finally outgunned Old Boney Bonaparte, while the french tyrant was snoozing and allowing his pampered egotist generals to take over the campaign on the field in the afternoon after a very full french lunch involving saucissons a la Crow de Avignon with copious lashings of Dijon moutard a la Simm. Yes the crow laden belgian hillsides were misty from the reports and retorts of the big guns. Wellington executed a trompe l'oeil and made as if to retreat and the inexperienced french generasls on the hills threw everything away into a blind rush forward. Boney lost his army because of his lazy habits. The hill of the crow on waterloo field was covered with rotting corpses and old boney was the catcher in the rye. "Have you no faith?" the marshall ney had wickedly said to Boney as the little fat guy was going for his siesta. Those hills have eyes. Those lovely bones. To be bleached by the sun. Crow was gone for a burton, though both he and boney were partial to picking over the corpses - such is the habit of tyrants. 

Ahoy there me hearties

Well splice the old timbers and keep the cannon going, there we are on the high seas again sailing south to the Falkland Islands which we have bought from the French, and there they are again, brazen as a pair of hussies or like two sluts famous all over the cage aux follies of Paris - the SS Chestle O'Black and his screaming little bi-ritual frigates, the SS Douai Fritillation and the SS Dame Edna Everard la Burkette. Three right little brazen sluts that ever saw what little action they do, since they spend all day hiding in their berths and harbours down here near Antarctica. They can't get enough of it. They always run to it, the larsen ice shelf. A bit cold for us down there where they spend most of their days and nights - cold as hell - and there they performing for all and sundry like two slut-waggons of Paris. Anything for a quick fix in Paris. Oh yeah there is no slut like a parisien one. Napoleon himself I am told often sups at those liquid poterion banquets down there - the devil's water it ain't so sweet but those frenchies get used to it. Anyway two faggot carrying barges nowadays with a few token cannons on deck - for all to see, just in case we thought they were the usual troop ships from the French prison island Devil's Island, rather than an honourable anything from the Dardanelles in Turkey. Napoleon - straight to hell.

Aha

Aha up in the crow's nest me hearties - now is that a golden galleon on the horizons or what?

Ship to shore

Well blast me old timbers and sleepers, that is a hot sun out there on a salty sea, what with all the Saltheart Dom Foamfollowers splashing around during the weekly keel-hauling of some poor misbegotten frenchie. We have one this week pulled from a french vessel posing as australian called the SS Swigger Vic which was moored under a petty officer's garb alongside with the SS Peter Joseph, and the french captain of this ship calls himself Giordano Bruno but looks like Dame Edna Everard close up - and with make-up. Honestly I do wonder at times why the old curassiers used to dress up in drag and why the french continue to appoint these odd bon viveurs of 2 left feet to their once esteemed navy. She must have joined for the sea-going agile seamen. Like so many frenchies at the Old Vec. Giordano Bruno would turn in his grave - and so would Capt Josephus i.e. Peter Joseph, of the great southern ports of Woolagong and Brisbane and Tasmania alongside Admiral Peter Elliott O'Shaughnessy and Capt Eric D'Arcy of the south seas. Anyway whatever his various aliases in the bowels of some infernal plot to destabilise the Garibaldi government and wreck the archives of Rome all the way to Paris - jolly well steal the lot as far as we can see for his fat toadie Bonaparte - we cannot verify his elaborate stories that he is just a dirty blackened seaman from some Jamaican slavery ship. We will keel haul this one - wash off the paint and black polish - and see if he comes up the other side, devoid of hammerheads and blues, with the words - wellllllll - !! Ahoy there !!

Ahoy there mateys

Well shiver the old timbers on these sleepers and creaking old oak beams - there is much of this old warship built it must be said of Sherwood Oak if not Scottish oak, something we have long borrowed since the time of Henry VIII - he was good for something after all surprise surprise. But anyway me hearties, here we are out on the broad blue Atlantic today and not a sail in sight as we head away from the Azores, where we put paid to 2 tired old tugs, the SS Boiling Burco and his sister ship the SS Mild Whodunnit - a right pair of french corvettes and once again preyers on the lesser boats and civilian ships of the old lines of the White Star trajectories. Here the Warspite leans into the wind today without too much damage except to the poop deck and the petty officer sleeping cabin - a couple of cabin boys knocked off their feet called Noah and Nick. Two old frenchie tug boats thrown out, spat out, kicked out to work on the high seas by a very bad moody Napoleon after his bloodied nose and temporary defeat at Quatre Bras at the hands of the gallant grenadiers of old London town - now time for some highlander work at La Haye Sainte methinks. HMS Venerabile alongside, but everybody knows she is a false card and a double dealer of a ship - said to be an old hand from the time of Queen Anne and pursuing Louis XIV's flagship Le Louvre, but the Venerabile is a double - always two faced. No truths no flags.

Aha land ahoy

Well me hearties tis time to put the record straight as we have sighted land and we are aiming for a happy landfall somewhere by Bermuda. There in sight is a safe passageway, though 3 ships from the french now block it - the SS Bede Walsh, the flagship the SS BC Chestle, and the sister ship the SS Stephanie Shields - all of these are manned by notorious criminal crews, freshly released from prison at Raspail St Jacques - a dreadful lot of macabre cut-throats with no respect for man or beast, though chiefly beast in their world. Career sailors like these remnant of a diseased crop, currently hugging the walls of the Spanish college in a far away harbour, do not die of scurvy; they die of curva - a romanian affliction of those sailors on sister ships of the SS Venereale that have been around too long, spreading disease, especially around the Med. Gigolo crews pursuing gigolo swiss mercenaries.

Twiddling thumbs

Ye gads and the seagulls of the Arctic, by yer mainbrayce, there is a real brew-ha coming up like a huge late summer scirrocco storm in the Bay of Biscay I can tell ye lads. No sooner than I slipped me moorings and headed out to sea near Port Royal, with a young Keira Knightley by me side, then we heard a huge sea-storm blow up in the Carribean and lots of lights were knocked out all round, especially on the 4 French curaissier ships caught in the channels between two islands of Virgin-Lesbos and Montserrat-Peeble - the SS Corblimeymate, her sister ship SS Kismet Hardy, and bringing up her rear as ever the dirty old tugboat of Napoleon, the SS Noah's Ark, trailed in the main by the old faggot and coal ship from Edinburgo, the SS Cutty Buddha, captained by Admiral Le Nez Je Touche, a right banana. A messy business and not a pretty sight as all these old corvettes were slim and lean in their youth - now they look like vietnamese pot bellied pigs and none can outrun a RN flagship - the RN is always on their tails, though not before Capt Jack Sparrow and his pirates and belles of the Ballustrade have today found them out - in flagrante delicto - on the south sea islander rampage among the unspoilt and innocent and untried virginals of the Virgin Islands. Terrible storms these late summer ones me hearties - terrible stuff - lots of thunderbolts and lightning flashes on the horizon.

Aha ahoy ahoy

Ahoy ahoy as the sun was setting and the seagulls crying, we are away and on the high seas again. And it is round the Cornish coast, but before we get to the Bay of Biscay and the Azores, a quick fruit and veg stop on the southern Irish coast where so many of the sailors hail from who were press ganged. The USS Venerati Frati is in sight here in the Queenstown harbour of old Cobh and there is another German aka Prussian ship in the estuary too - a 37 gunner the identity of which cannot be revealed at this time. So too is a pretty schooner from the Peck school of ship-building at Meredith dockyards where Dickie Greeneleafe has his boatyard in the Hudson River called The Roman Holiday which is always nice to see as it is a romantic skip with a pretty girl on the deck - a real memphis belle showing off her feathers - feathers !! The Talented Miss Ripley one assumes. Anyway, we are off then round the cape of Valentia to the Azores to find us a Portuguese man o war - not the slippery jellyfish kind that one might expect in those waters near the Armada graveyards but a real Portuguese carrick, friendly though not foe as Britain and Portugal enjoy the oldest alliance in Europe dating back to 1200. 

Aha

Well today me hearties is a big day for the navies of the South Seas, as it is the 25th May, the day on which some admiral, an Irishman, founded the Argentine Navy, and there is a ship named the Veintecinco de mayo in that navy, nowadays surrounded by so many hangers on on the SS Camera and the SS Gaenswein and the SS Napoleone des Soeurs, as well as one or two frigates on the Brest run called the SS Crow and the SS Whitman; so we are cluncking together our beer mugs here at the Golden Galleon again for a rare old time with lots of old sea dogs together, enjoying a pint and a tankard or two on the Seven Sisters. Ahoy there captains and chief petty officers. We are splicing the mainbrayce here near Sleaford on the South Downs. And Capt Tim Weybridge is our team leader tonight, aided and abetted by young Capt Kevin Bling and his stout hearted sailors on board the USS Venerabile and the sister ship the USS Portineria. All aboard ship tomorrow and then we set sail for the high waters of the Solent and then out and beyond the cannonry of Napoleon's shore batteries along the Biscay to the South Seas again. Ahoy there captains !! Ahoy there ye lads !!

Ashore enfin

Ahoy there lads and lassies of the old ships of the line on the South Downs. A bit of shore leave this week, on the old Seven Sisters, at the pub called the Golden Galleon by Sleaford. Luvvily. A pint of the golden. Gold like Venerabiles at Madrid.

Shiver me old timbers

Shiver me timbers, tis a different port we leave from this week, one of the east coast ports by Felixstowe and Harwich, as the old girl pulls out of the Sea-pull-in and into the Great North Sea or the old Germanic Sea as it is known by the argumentative Frenchies. The Germanic Sea plays host to the German fleet which we shall try to rendez-vous with but there is one or two French men of war like the old sea dog, the SS Oscar Piscatoris, the corvette the SS Luigi Gonzaga, and the frigate, SS Hacker Hackeson. the The Germanic Sea is not especially deep but it is rough in places with lots of sandy bars to negotiate while Napoleon is sleeping on his bunk and we have to sneak past the various Martello towers along the old east coast. This week we is following our chief punkha wallah, our C, Capt Whitman, aboard the flagship the HMS Rip van Winkle.

A curious anomaly

Despite all these literary protestations that French agent provocateurs keep pushing and shelling around the inland seas of the various 5 continents, the truth is that nowadays such protestations are running a little thin, in fact very thin, as we see French frigate after frigate boarding other passenger ships and press-ganging young men into their evil republican black services - the so-called HMS Hardyesque, the so-called HMS Cassidy-Bott, the so-called HMS Alan Alanis Mauricesette, the so-called Tesse d'Urbevilles, the so-called HMS Jane Pippa Austen, the so-called Pip Doylette, the so-called HMS Elizabetha ladette Dawkins, the so-called HMS Charlie Dickends, the so-called HMS Picklet Piglette, the so-called HMS Joanna Wayne, the so-called HMS Uterine Liner, the so-called HMS Crispination Castonette, the so-called HMS Davidette MacLaughlin, the so-called HMS Paulette Hemming, and even posing as american warspites, like the so-called USS Raquel Blake, the so-called USS Mervyn Towelling, the so-called USS Antonia Frazier, the so-called USS Ianotta O Farrellette Ferrett, the so-called USS Becket O Cheeslecake, the USS Theodora Cornucopia Davey, the USS Eustace Konstantia, the USS Stephanie Shields, the USS Gettysburg O Sheridanette, the USS Timothea Hopkins, the USS Maurice MecTaylor, or sometimes as Russian tugs, like the MV Cheshire Chestleton, the MV Conway Conrette, the MV Bradley Manning, the MV Teddy Snowden, the MV Kristoff Shogun Schonheit, the MV Karla Lehmann, the MV Francoise Fleischmann, the MV Alanis Lebeaupin, the MV Foxy Fox, the MV Bordeaux, the MV Fulda, the MV Magdaburg, the MV Alanis Masonique, the MV Dermotesque Huge Lynch, the MV Burco Dorkette, the MV Dingley Swingley, the MV Brown Stephania, the MV Kunglet, the MV Fagan, the MV Lane, the MV Duffy, the MV Acta, and so on. The huge number of dud ships on the 7 seas is mindblowing, so all such need to be executed as spies on capture.

Secure the mainsail

Well that was a beefy one - a sizeable cutter and a raft of tea clippers, and behind them a little raft of some poor old sod from the old barge the HMS Bryan Boyle who was a castaway - outkast - cast onto the high seas and left to drift hundreds and thousands of miles off course at a paltry 5 knots if he was lucky - poor old bugger. Shades of the story of a chief petty officer from the HMS Brian Cuff. Those tea clippers though are long-haul ships but they have a tendency to be nosy, and as me old mate Capt Jack Sparrow says, pirate of the caribbean, such ships should mind their own business on their bowheads. Reminds me of the peelers and press-gangs of home, nosying about the brackish waters, back in Austria-Bulgari, where so many clippers pose not as South African cutters, but as Austro-Hapsburg barges full of the usual coal from Newcastle, yes Newcastle. The SS Schuster, the SS Stocker, the USS Lexington - always in an Austro-hungarian port, and the little tug trailing around after her, the SS Tardis and the sister ship the Portuguese-chinese junk carrick out of Hong Kong, the old SS Lusitania, followed everywhere now even as far as Macao by the american destroyer, the SS Ruscillo-rosetta. All these ships regularly report in to Vienna, via the Port-warden of St Polten and St Christophero V Schonheit - !!

Aha ahoy there

Ahoy there me hearties. My heart goes out to Admiral Tipper and General Blucher, as there are so many false prussian boats bearing false prussian colours at the moment on the 7 seas, false ships that we have come across so far include, the SS MaccieD Tipper, the SS Fabrizio Gneisenau, the SS Claudio Tirpitz, the SS Prinz Eugen Eugene, the SS Doppio-faccio Kerr, the SS Walter Whitman, the SS Ralphe Emerson, the SS Vincenzo le bon, the SS Jeremy Fisherman, the SS Ordinariat, the SS Vikariat von Steubenville, the SS Rathaus O Morgan, the SS Bacardi Rum, the SS Fleischmann von Rommell, the SS Lebeaupin von Huber, the SS Killermann von Mozart, the SS Shallenberg von Tyrrell, the SS Schuster von Mannfried, the SS Marienfest von Isaacs, the SS Willy Whitehead, the SS Raphaella von Venerati, the SS Karen le Dade, the SS Rachel le Hemming, the SS Theodore Davey Jones, the SS Alamo Crockett, the SS Sir Edmundo O Burke, the SS Joe Icel Keenan, the SS Frederick von Turner, the SS Shellington von Marien-Definition, the SS Cuidado Tito. the SS Malcome le Nott, the SS Burco Aqua Bollente, the SS Garibaldi Garabandido el Gringo, the SS Martina O Hayes, the SS Mikhail Petronellus O Gorz, and the sluggish SS Vlad the Vladivostock and so on. These are the ones we have come across in our travels on the 7 seas, and they tend to hang around the East, ostensibly calling on Russian ports around Kamachatka and Vladivostock but actually interested heavily in the China Seas, and maintain inscrutable captains like chinese mandarins which is what they are, imprisoning brave Degenuber sailors of the Imperial Prussian Navy by turning guns on the unsuspecting germanicums.

Heck and blast

Ahoy there - heck and blast these muskets of the opposition - very painful to get shot so high up in the crow's nests but anyway, we might survive for another day. What is worse is spotting these false prussian ships that fly the German eagles for enseigns but which always fire on the real Blucher's ships. The false prussian fakes include so far the SS Hemmingway RA, the SS McDaden, the SS Clarkeson, the SS Hanvey Forrest, the SS Simper Gumber, the SS Gumpole, the SS Simon's Yat, the SS Lean Lavinia, the SS Acta Duffy, the thames barges the SS Adrian Graffy, the SS Anthony Milner, the SS Findlay-Doctor, the SS Katey Perry, the SS Sheryle Crow, the SS Theodora Empress, and all pursued this week by the Greek allies the HMS Procopius and the HMS Tomassino.

And introducing ....

And like the little British schoolboy who leaves his best sausages till last on his school plate, there is no need to introduce our best possession in the antipodes, the so-called HMS Chastleton Castle who is always castling with some frigate or other on the banks of the Tyrrhenian Sea by the old harbours of the Via Giulia, but above all such poseurs bear an unnatural resemblance to Old Boney. The last few years has seen this ship escape time and time again from the clutches of the big gunners of the RN, but he has escaped often into thick broily doylie waters, been covered in black black oil and bitch-pitch, and then spirited away by some old dirty barge up the river Seine, as if the French have not had enough of the sight of his portly carcass sitting on their corners picking up trade and traffic and gossip about the embassies of the RN. Oh yes, there is nothing quite like the Romfordian Romney and his enduring team of Rolandos on their enigma typesetter machines - busily banging away long into the nights of the Italian Resistance Army under some new and eponymous Garibaldi, to bring wreck and ruin to the far harbours of Hong Kong where lies the government bonds of London and Greenwich. A troubling lot and still troubling the great markets and high seas of international business. Still brawling in the streets of the Seine's many tributary ports such as Jamaica and Bangkok. BRIC = MINT.

Sir Francis

Oh yassss. Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Horatio Hornblower of Romford and Romney would turn in their now very watery graves if they had themselves found so many of these ersatz field weapons that are posing as RN but actually trapping younger captains and younger men on their more sluggish heavier ships on our side. So take the so-called HMS Haddonham, the so-called HMS Kilgarrick, the so-called HMS Stone the Crow, the so-called HMS Hood, the so-called HMS George III, the so-called HMS Milner-riverine, the so-called HMS Funlay-Findlay, the so-called HMS Burco and her escort ships the HMS Lady Emma Hamilton and the HMS Lady Jane Gray, the so-called HMS Koppelio, the so-called HMS Toffaleo, the so-called HMS River Jordan, the so-called HMS Stephanie Shield, the so-called HMS Alanis Morrisselle, the so-called HMS Kerrill, the so-called HMS Mecdonaldia, the so-called HMS Jeremiah Fairhead, the so-called HMS Whitley Heuston, the so-called HMS Kevin Bodyguard, the so-called HMS Nomenclatura, the so-called HMS Delia FitzGallagher, the so-called HMS Sir Ernst Flemingway, and so on and so on; these are the type 42 frigates we have all identified as posing as RN but actually belonging to Napoleon's French Navy and these are the ones so far caught firing on innocent civilian ships like the old Russian transport ships off Murmansk or the innocent Prussian ships off the coast of Hamburg and Kiel. Come on now lads, tis but a grievous war-crime to fire on innocent little lassies and laddies out for a swim off the Cornish coast. But there's an end to it - musketfire on the leadership is our best shot. RN.  

HMS ?

Not all that is found in a Welsh mine and that glitters is real gold. This is a lesson we are all learning on the high seas laddie jims, and boy there is much out there in any war that does not glitter so well as gold, but especially in a war against the scheming dross and minions and gremlins of Napoleon - Old Boney. Take for instance the number of men of war we have come across that bear royal enseigns but are not actually Royal Navy. The so-called HMS Whitbourne, the so-called HMS Freiburg, the so-called Happy Haffey.

Well well well

Well jolly hockeysticks, there is nothing like the high seas to surprise the weary crow's nest eyes of an old sailor, and there is another sighting of the old tug, the HMS Cheezlewhit, and old iron ore barge that was adapted and pressed into service right at the beginning of the campaign against Napoleon, young Napoleon who is a bit of a marauder and a young men's mannykin on the field. Waterloo comes and goes but somehow this young Napoleon seems to survive the worst of our artillery. This may be a job for the Irish troops pressed ganged into service with Wellington if not Cardigan.

Aha

Well high on the great seven seas, there is quite a bit of activity on the surface, what with the USS Anima, the USS Lexington in hot pursuit of the SS Napoleon III, the SS Empress Eugenie, the SS Piglette, the SS Bellatrix the Golden, the SS Belinda, the SS Suzette, the SS Bethany, the SS Catherine, and other French ships of the line, all working for Napoleon's army.

Ah la naturaleza

Suffice it to say, we were surprised when the old SS Kilne Green cut short a visit to the Bahamas and headed after the HMS Woolhampton and chased it for a long while, for two or three years, and then gave chase to the daugher ship the Sovereign of the Seas, the HMS George VII, which it has taken a shine to for a good while, in the hope of directing it on the cannons of the French ports of Canada. Oh yes the napoleonic SS Kilne Green is always up for a challenge and always shadowing the George VII with a bigger man of war, the SS La Scala. Anyway got to go, more anon up the crow's nest. God rest their merry souls on those ships. I hope the HMS Woolhampton survives yet another assault from a Capt Jack Sparrow of the French at Brest.

Eheu

Well glottle my epiwhotnots, there is a fine sight for old eyes, and old sea eyes these are indeed of an old sea dog himself, it must be said, as we see in our spyglass a set of square sails of a tedious pair of couples, an old square rigger called the SS Kiln Greene and its sister ship the SS Hughie Green, and an old cruiser called the SS Whitmash and the SS Sproggit, cruising these ancient warm waters, oddly enough with old Royal out-of-date enseigns but actually French men of war which we might have to engage, possibly with the HMS Repulse, the HMS Reading, the HMS Woolhampton and the middle term cruiser the HMS Stonehouse, built to a new design by Isambard Kingdom Brunelle; just to see off a nasty spate of double-dealing, double poleaxing, and above all double crossing Napoleonics, who should know better than to commit treason and espionage on the high seas in other people's colours. Slightly over-blown, sewn by their own sailors, and somewhat out-of-date with union jacks that are upside down - and being a bunch of secular republicans as they are, no sense that the union jack is a christian flag of christian alliances, showing forth the 6 christian crosses of christian saints; the red cross of St George (England), the white cross of St Piran (Cornwall), the white diagonal cross of St David (Wales), the blue and white diagonal of St Andrew (Scotland), the blue cross vertical of St Edmund (East Anglia), and the red and white diagonal of St Patrick (Ireland). Anyway we shall let off a broadside at these secular republican shadowy lounge lizards.

Well well well

Ahoy there. Well well well, there is an old cutty sark if ever I saw one - the old SS Brighton and Hove, cutting its way through the waters of the south seas. And on the horizon now the much maligned and much bruised HMS Garybandal but a fine ship that has been a veteran of many campaigns, the bravest of the lines off the South Downs, and much misunderstood by lesser tugs.

Le diable des deux guerres

Grace a Dieu, sacre bleu, as the evil black old napoleonics would say - there in my telescope is an Italian warship, the SS Garibaldi, and it seems to be following very slavishly and stupidly a canny cunning cantonese vessel with French colours, the infamous SS Chest of Rum with a petty officer called Lieutenant le jeun Aquitaine, which served for a long time in the russian navy, some years after it was built at Canterbury dockyards at Chatham, from which it was secretly launched for the local Royal Navy of Cantuar until it was joined at Arundel and Brighton by other vessels that powered it over to Italy with a new crew to serve there with the papal states navy up to 1815. A cunning, canny, and creepy captain who was long decorated at Canterbury for his apparent somewhat too elaborate exploits with the Royal Navy and then the French Navy and then the papal navy while actually working all the time for the Garibaldi irregulars - a case of HAS or haslet as we now say in the Wellingontonia armies. Wellington knows this guy and has seen him in action in odd colours off the coast of Portugal during the long Iberian Wars. The SS Chest of Rum and its French captain Capt Mordred.

C

Well shiver me timbers, the local leader of the intelligence maritime division says that the lads must watch those shore girlies on the Spanish coast as they make very good spies and agents. Keep mum, she is not so dumb - this is the new watchword from the Admiralty.

Up high

Nobody likes staffing the Crow's nest on board this good ship, but some lugg-head has to do it, and fortune favours the brave. Besides there is always an extra ration of cheese and biscuits and maybe a bottle of Jamaica rum for the early bird that spots another sail on the horizon.

Whoops y popsicle

Gar nichts, as the prussian armies of Blucher now say these days, but I see I made a gaffe there in my last pose by describing the Venerabile as a good ship of the line, an RN, when of course nobody really knows which side she is always fighting on, since she appears in so many liveries, but generally we have always found her to be in agreement with the values of Charlotte and Robespierre and the Gang of Four and the great Cheshire Cat that appears in the corner of the Refectory from time to time on board the ship in the sailor's quarters. A fascinating lot but probably French and Napoleonic. We must now consider whether with meagre resources we can effectively build some defence, some more Martello towers as per Dalkey Island, on both islands, to block these black French from entering our ports on the west and south coasts. Ireland cannot afford to have too many love affairs with French Revolutionary doctrine such as divide and rule divisionism. The French napoleonics cannot really be trusted with high office or the chief petty officer decks of say a Sovereign of the Seas.

Well it is cold out here

Well shiver me timbers lads, it can be cold out here on the high seas, especially without the old consolations of the south sea islanders and their many blandishments and floral wreaths. Or even without the nice warmed up sea rum and punch and puntames of the good ship HMS Venerabile and its many foreign hands on deck nowadays - a nicer kinder vessel there never was on the high seas of the seven oceans.

Aha me hearties

Ahoy there shipmates. The enemy dragoon musketeer we captured from the last skirmish in the Bay of Bisgay what with their skeleton crew on the MV Marple and the MV Burkhead and the MV Pinnocchio, is being keel-hauled today for the pleasure of the ship's company, given that we lost 4 good men in the fight sabre-to-sabre with Capt Bob Sable-sur-Sarthe leading ours, but we lost these 4 to over-hanging musket-fire from the cheats overhead in the ship's rigging on the Marple. We lost Brown of Harrogate, Rolls of Dorking, Clarke of Usk, and Keenan of Dumbchapelle - 4 good simple scottish lads in the mayne from lovely generous simple mothers, all aiming at military perfection and a good life at sea with the real Royal Navy, as opposed to a life of piracy with the frauds that the two French ghost-squadrons have become - the latest French ploy to have us all believe that there are genuine defectors to the Royal Navy out there on the high seas - actually these two-faced creep squadrons - always up the arses of the Admiralty on both sides - really do belong at heart to Napoleon, but young innocent freshmen get deceived at times and lower their muskets when they have them in their sights. So we are keel-hauling a guy called Monsieur Langridge Guy de Mau-mau-passant - found out eventually after exhaustive watching and on the French side, as ever another fiendish cabin boy of the old scheming two-faced double dealing and double pole-axing Napoleon - his best man apparently at his wedding to some cabinette near Pythagoras and his best splurge in the Bay of Biscay. Oh yes the southerners of the Mayne approaches are easily deceived - a pretty stultitious lot down south. Our own French petty officer, Monsieur de Guise, a good solid royaliste defector to Britain, knows these fraudsters from afar, as he met them many times on foreign shores in French livery before the wars of Napoleon actually broke out in the summer of 92 - where they gave themselves away with their large wads of French monnaie.  Mais oui, 1792 was a good year for the colonies under the jackboot of French imperialiste ambitions. Napoleon was always a bit of a fraudster and France given over to an orgy of blood under him and his petty tit-for-tat personalised Revolution, so much so that the good Louis XVIII had to take refuge with us at Hartwell House near Chequers De Boleyn.

Golly

Well shiver me timbers, the waters out here are colder than methinks and thought. Not like the warm waters around the SS Venerabile, where the MV Doylie and the MV Whitmore can be found, snuggled up real close and surrounded by so many young sailor-boys, men in the main who should be defending their country, if they had one.

Ahoy there

Ahoy there. Up high in the crow's nest today. And there they are again, the MV Marple and the MV Burkette, cruising around northern Scottish waters, wrapped in white surrender flags, though they never do. My oh my, they never give up this little couple, two very small frigates of no import, but they like to tackle some very big navies, and boy do they sink very quickly, as and when in Hong Kong.

Ahoy there - South Sea Bubbles

Ahoy there me hearties. Well this is a surprise in the old Crow's nest - to see a couple of old Roman triremes sailing this way but working for the Royal Navy officially, at least according to the union jacks and enseigns on their bows. Odd that these are not on their sterns where they are supposed to be. The SS Keithley Romanus and the SS Patricius Severus Caledonicus. In behind, covered and hidden by these two front-runners, front being the right word for such Destra Nazionales, we can also spot a Greek trireme of some glory and elaborate majesty, but again just slightly over-blown like a Pythagoras on his wedding day to some Nerone in the background at a low vive nightspot, and lo and behold, it is the Queen of the Aegean and her name is Cormacchione Pinocchione the Great, otherwise known among the lads as Cleopatra VII. A funny sight. We don't know what to do with these three, but they have ramming bows and all of their two-timing insignia is overblown and elaborate, like they are working for the King Ptolemy regiments of Napoleon in Egypt, so best to sink them anyway as their union jacks are upside down and hoisted on the bow, so probably false cards, playing the union for all they are worth - traitors to both king and country. All hell lads - fire at will ye sons of Victoria.

Well shiver me timbers

Dash it lads, there is no time like the present to take on some fresh water in the Portuguese Azores and pick up some fresh fruit too to cope with the scurvy that is a scourge on all long-haul voyages. Glad to get away from the last lot of French men of war. Each to his own, but the two ship flotilla is now sailing into the Azores. As per the picture askance.

Ahoy there seamen

Top of the morning to ye lads on the high seas. Ahoy there shipmates. We have come out of the Straits of Gibraltar today and these are perilous waters though, because we ran right smack into a gaggle of French corvettes and frigates from Old Boney's crowd, the SS Milnerbird, the USS Buffington, and the SS Haddenfields, so there we are. Little podgy ships that look like boyish boys, so very popular at the French naval colleges with the old crowd of petty French generals in Paris. NB - Those crushing colonials have joined Old Boney Napoleon and his flotillas and fleets. Bad enough the Spanish flirting with that French crowd, as they do just across the way by the Bay of Biscay, but maybe we shall have another bash at Yorktown or do some fine shelling of the Washington Capitol like the old days during the War of Secession, and the Indo-French Wars, when the yanks and colonials attempted to secede from the Dominions of the New World under the Crown over there by way of an illegal ballot and illegal referendum. Colonials bah balderdash !! And then they complain about the Imperial Russian Fleet - bah tis all poppycock me hearties. The Prussians - as usual nowhere to be seen, and tis always the case, when they are needed most. Where is Tipper and Blucher and Gneisenau and Tirpitz? Ruddy germans. We shall see if we can see off this colonial and French flotilla now this side of Cadiz.

Aha

Aha a mug-shot me hearties of the good old captain of the Respite.

Ah

Well shiver me timbers and splice the old mainbrayce, these ropes on a square rigger are devilish to the old soles of a sailor's feet, shinnying up and down all day, port out and starboard home. Anyway no action yesterday, as we were becalmed on the shores of a mysterious place called the Tyrrhenian Sea and then stuck for ages down close to Sicily by the straits of Messina, all trying to write our memoirs if you please, as there was precious little else to do, and we were all staring at the Fields of Elysium I'll have you, if we had been caught by a few French frigates down there. My oh my. Hot weather and calm seas - makes a grown man nervous. But methinks we shall come ashore to some shore batteries and these might send word of our presence off Sicily to French men of war. There is a pack of them out there to the south of Taranto what with Garibaldi's lot and they are the SS Rouge-silo, the Walt Whitman, and the Parsimonious Parson of Salzburg; a right crop of little thumpers swelled by the ranks of the Austrian-Hapsburgs now that Napoleon's paramour has married into Innsbruck.

Crow's nest

Ahoy there sailors, up on the crow's nest this morning. Very calm crystalline seas. We are almost becalmed off the coast at Messina. Very quiet. Nothing on the high seas this morning. And no square riggers. Ahoy there.

Blue Harbour

Ahoy there captains and midshipmen of the Seven Seas. The night is long on the high seas, and the great black expanse of water is a prey to every fear. Old seadogs often used to speak of seeing things at night that they never thought existed. But surprise surprise we are at last putting into a safe harbour near Devil's Island, the BC penal colony where we hope to pick up some fresh supplies of fruit - mangos maybe and apples and oranges and if we are really luck some lemons as lemons abound at this penal colony - good for withstanding scurvy. Ah yes me hearties, tis a long wait for such cool blue harbours. In the harbour I see that the canons point out to sea and there coming in to the port is an old sight, the old colonial wardog, the USS Cheeslepick Chuzzlewit with its very famous laughing captain, Capt Robyn le Williams, since she is famous for running press gangs around old ports and cities and inciting many a ship to mutiny, thence to sail away unharmed with the glorious tricoleur of the French - lots of guns and lots of crew, but maybe too many cabin boys in her team with their tell-tale spray-on blue bellbottoms - those lovely bones bleached by the suns of many devil's islands and all so cheaply. No ransom necessary when the crew is paid in the shekels od dead men's bones and making a base out of a hideaway under foreign secret colours. She is more than capable of turning a harbour in a storm into a signalling centre to bring down all the western navies from here, and she could do this by morning watch, as she has done a fair few times now at the harbour of the old seadog the SS Venerable de Foi. Yes Captaine Robyn she is a canny old dog - she never gives up on some private dream of wrecking western navies and their economic power bases. Never faced the guillotine though. Soon maybe.

Aha

Ahoy there me shipmates - there is nothing like approaching the great Barrier Reef for enjoyment, but there is a big storm now clouding over the south Australian coast - some heavy weather expected as we might say at the old Greenwich Maritime School. Heavy weather over Sidney.

Ah the blue respite

Oh for the deep blue lagoons of those southern seas me hearties - now there's a dancer's leg. Fiji and the southern islands of Micronesia and the like - there ain't no more bootiful sea-sight than these.

Well well well er

Well shiver me timbers and splice the mainbrayce, the old horizons were free all morning and then we spotted a sail far out on the starboard side, which when it drew nearer turned out to be a ghost ship of the old French navy, the old SS Cheeslecake, known to the frenchies as Madame Bovary le Gateau. And there she was trying to get past a Royal Navy line to rejoin her French forces in Canada where she has been working for some time now, stirring up opposition to the Crown and generally making mischief with lots of Mounties and Huron naked indians - a funny tale, an odd business.

Ahoy there -

In the crow's nest for the day today, keeping these old seadog eyes peeled on the horizon and hoping against hope that we might see one of the last great warships of the Royal Navy the HMS Ampney Crucis, even if pursued by a half a dozen fast attack frigates and corvettes of Old Boney Napoleon.

Ahoy there

A fair sea breeze today on the high seas in mid-ocean.

Aha

Ahoy there mateys it is always bright and warm and sunny on the high seas between Bermuda and Jamaica, what with so much tonnage passing through, like ghosts of the Golden Hind. Truth to tell we sometimes see the old exploration ships like the SS El Nino or the SS Santa Maria that used to sail around here with the Spanish crews of once upon a time, ghosts ships in the main nowadays, and with them some pale and wand crew pursued by the pirates of the Afro-carribean seas seeking the gold of El Dorado, like the SS Corvallium and the SS Doyboy and the dark pirate ship the SS Black Pearl captained by capt Jamie D Sparrow and his new world crew from yesteryear. Still there is always the HMS Walt Whitman and her escort ships, the HMS Burco Forth, another former flagship that sends many messages to the Admiralty on the progress of her campaign, alongside the HMS St Bride and the HMS Dorking too as they plough their sealanes round and about the two key ships of the RN squadron, the HMS Strange and the HMS Warspite, as ever quick to see off these black ships of the night and help out the ships of continued exploration from the Spanish empire of the new world.

Golly Gosh

Here off the coast of Lusitania, well we have all now heard of the sabre-rattling of the SS Reponse and the SS Respighi, but now we have to deal with the largest of all the enemy vessels from the Bay of Biscay methinks, the SS Warspite, formerly called the HMS Nom de Plume whence her traitorous captain Shark made love to a fallen heroine and defected to the scheming French, and it is this warship which makes a big splash and tonnage of displacement in these heavy seas. Golly gosh and shivver me timbers mateys. The SS Warspite has a fearsome feminine capitaine, called Edith le rien Raphaela, a young women of dubious lineage who climbs up on to the bowhead and waves a larger French banner in the face of the enemy, naked to the belt, singing Je ne regrette rien, and other favourite French tunes such as Je n'aime pas le Terry's All Gold, or Je vous haies Vous Terry's Chocolat Orangerie, and with this show of defiance, she lets loose all her black sooted cannonry on both decks at the poor unsuspecting sailors on the receiving end on some mild Dutchman. A vicious tongued harrowden and a double-dealing libertine like the SS Sophie Marceau and the SS Celine Dior and a personal mistress of the dubious Lord Rochester Azir. Terrible things have happened to their lovers in this port of Port Royal in the Carrib. The only thing we have in our repertoire to face this huge juggernaut of a gargantua is Lord Nelson hisself on the HMS Victory but he is busy in the south seas at the moment, having won an accidental and glancing victory at Cadiz with the help of Nuestra Senora Vulnerada of Vallodalid and the intercessory prayers of some vicar called Fr Joseph O'Sullivan SJ of Coimbra and Fatima. We must send a message to the Victory because this huge ten tonne Tessie is a bit of a waggon and carries lots of gunpowder. Sacre bleu - voici le terreur !! J'avance comme un ane !!

Shivers

Shiver me timbers - there's that pirate ship the USS Walt Whitmope, heading straight for a collision with the SS Kurt Whitman. God knows what will happen. Whitmans like whipmores are not welcome in the Atlantic, and they do insist on their titles and their poor third-world ceremonies.

Splice the mainbrayce

Well shiver me timbers - I don't believe it me hearties and me old ship's rudders. It was like an apparition at some wayside shrine like Peterborough or Walsingham, but after a raid on the French naval dockyards at Dieppe during which we lit up a load of French Revolutionary Forces ships with our own incendiaries over the top of the harbour wall, there sailing out to us came a ghost ship that I had not seen for many a long year me shipmates. It was draped in French flags and French colours but as soon as it escaped the harbour boom, off came those colours and I recognised the old HMS Cheshire Cheese finally getting free of her French prison wardens, held captive these long 20 years. A fine sight for sore eyes and it was only me own experienced eye in the Crow's Nest that saw the difference and recognised the old blighter, so I signalled to me captain not to fire on the escaping man of war. It was a sight for sore eyes I can tell ye shipmates. HMS Cheshire Cheese - thou art most welcome back to the fleets of the Royal Navy and I doff my Royal Enseign in your direction !! Aha such is the stuff of legend me hearties.