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.