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.