USS Corpus Christi

Some navies do like to insert religious names onto their ships, even onto their men of war, and this is the case with the Venerabile squadron of the Napoleonic Forces in recent years, hence the nomenclatura above. It does not take an Einstein to work out where such things lead to in the long run. This is the Einstein that despite his best efforts and a long, difficult defence or viva did fail his doctorate. The famous Einstein, not so glamorous a beginning as is often imagined. But we all have to begin somewhere. Einstein like Galileo was a college drop out and some Venerabiles know this too. Galileo began his career studying medicine and then dropped out and became a maths prof elsewhere. Anyway it is like calling a nuclear submarine the Corpus Christi after the city in Texas, can be misunderstood. So too the ships of the Napoleonic line have a tendency to tempt the fates somewhat by giving religious names to their activities, just when the astute observer can spot the underlying politics of their cause. Same difference.   

HMS Lalisa

 So indeed, fresh from their campaigning in the Eastern Waters, our friends in the Blinkie Squadron have turned up a surprise cabal over yonder there, and have sent a signal to the HMS Chanty to sail forth from Singapore where some years later the George VI went down plus also the Prince, so to help in the mopping up operations, the USS Polaris beseiged again by those French Pirates and Napoleonic Carricks over there, not far from the scenes of sconfitare in the MV MacDonald at the Forbidden Cities of Peking no less, not a million miles from the HMS Xiao-Xiao of Shanghai. All to play for, Amen to that.

HMS Jennie Kim

Gosh, how time flies in the Napoleonic Wars of the two great Navies out there on the high seas, and so the Blackpink Squadron put to sea the other day this week in an uncommon show of strength, participating at a royal regatta for the ships of the line but now busily engaged in the fighting over in South Korea, in the seas of the South China Sea where a Chinese junk ship has caught fire quite inexplicably, the SS Yellow River. No sign of the USS Polaris. The Pirates of the Caribbean have deployed over there to raid the coastlines and colonies of the West, especially Hong Kong and Macao, but the HMS Jennie Kim is on to them quite quickly. She has also been joined by the HMS Rose, the HMS Kim Jissoo, plus the flagship of the Squadron, the HMS Lalisa, very effective RN frigates, their captains fresh from their knighthoods at the London Palaces. 

HMS Miss Saigon

Anyway, one of the recurring but moderne problems with the ships of Napoleon is that they do not know how to behave properly on the High Seas, preferring to act more like pirates than proper mariners of a proper Navy, so they take over old ships and go and scuttle them on some unfeeling orthodox traditional shoreline like some older Graf Spee for example in the River Plate, cave canem, according to old schemas from the Victorians and the Georgians of George III fame,  a favourite device, as the RN has discovered recently in the Caribbean waters, when the MV Vincent Wang appeared, named innocuously enough after a Chinese Napoleonic martyr of some vintage from the Vietcong side of Vietnam, and this one was operating freely and openly up the Yellow River, now a dark colour of Browne, but that was until the HMS Miss Saigon and the HMS Chanting Chantry came along to spoil that particular ruinous party, parties all there. The girl captains of those two Corvettes soon turned their guns on the murky river gunboat, and sent the MV Vinsent Wang to the bottom with her predictable cargoes of Ferrero Rocher chocolates for the SS Polaris. Sad but true, harsh but true. 

Ahoy HMS Brinklow

Ahoy there me hearties out here on the open Seas with the ghost ship, the HMS Marie Celeste, plying these northern waters chin above water to the north just above Iceland.

Three French Frigates have been caught in open waters recently in this Napoleonic Campaign to the north and east of the choppy waters off NFLD, the MV Hudsonia, a stocky little thing full of guns, the MV Cestino, also stocked with weapons for use against innocent sailing pleasure boats, and the MV Ferrero Rocher, chock full of diplomats and ambassadors to the French Court of Napoleon III and his Empress Eugenie who was keen to have them deliver some portrait paintings back home to France from the New World of New France, portraits of victims of those old French Red Indian Huron Campaigns such as Generale Munroe the Scots general after the Battle of Fort Andrew, these were pursuing some 2 unlikely RN Corvettes in those waters by the icebergs of Newfoundland, the HMS Coventry and the HMS Brinklow, the sailors on board stuffing their faces with deli beli sandwiches at the time when sighted, when the French Frigates came across a reef just under the surface and hit some ice too, breaking into their slimline tar coated wooden keels, so they have begun to founder in such inhospitable waters, inhospitable at the best of times. The 2 Corvettes took some broadsides and some long range incendiary devices and shells but have managed to avoid obvious damage and slipped away into the channels to Greenland and Iceland and then home to British and Celtic and Faroe waters. Nice escape. Tricky waters those around Newfoundland with some self-generated problems for unwary foolish pointing captains and their wooden Rekjaviker ships and gunners and that even with experienced captains of the French lines. Experienced but adventurous explorers. Sunk this morning when the Icelandic gunboats appeared to finish. 

Ahoy there - Capt Sparrow

 Well shiver me timbers, if it ain't that varmint and that old sea dog, Capt Jack Sparrow, plying his ugly trade among the innocent ships of the North Jamaica Seas, always out for a cheap victory and a cheap recovery of some innocent merchant vessel. Darn it. There he goes. 

Black flags

All the young boys, the very young boys, in the Napoleonic fleets, dream of running away, since the MV Venta is a harsh brutal ship run by a captain called Lucy in the Skye with Diamonds, who promises them all a future with diamonds are forever, but on the way to the channel gets them used to abducting young princesses like gorgeous Emma but they all dream of running off and becoming pirates of the Caribbean, and flying black flags over their black ships, lumpy old decrepit black pearls, and raiding fair yonder ports in the very innocent USA and working for old cockney lying skunks like Capt Jack and his belle of the ball Petronella Knightley. Oh yes, mais oui, they all think they will be working for a capt Jack, but actually get so used to compromise that they become criminals in the meantime, abducting girls in the med and then young ones in the channel. Oh yes, their capt Lucy knows how to derail this lot down a siding to await eventual extinction. Caveat. Lovely to look at, these pirate ships, but hell to live with, and literally.