Ahoy there lads in the Capricorns

Ah lads tis but a day and hike from the old Mount St Michael of Cornwall, a long ways back to those clement sweet green shores of the old islands, but the search must go on, some old warbanger of an old fighting ship called the Temeraire Hudson, still putting out for a fight that she cannot really win. No stomach for the long campaign see, and no real stamina for the long shot back home to some port in France. All these New France battlewaggons of old steamers are a bit before their time - very smokey and very dirty - if truth be told to an audience of the French Franglais in their chateaux. Vive l'empereur! the old Hudson and his petty officer Haddon will cry as they wave their tricorn hats, but truth is me hearties is that the old boyo Napoleon will not lose any sleep for such hard cases, too brave and too fast for their own good. Napoleon is a conservative, a coward in the real battles, who will simply slide home every evening for honey and tea, and his usual secret Remy Martin.

Ah truth to tell

Ahoy there lads, life on the high seas is not easy, but then life on land is no better, what with the lack of proper sewage treatment facilities and the like. Speaking of sewage, we came across two sewage boats recently, two old canal barges up and down the Thames for a living, but caught out on the squall in the North Sea, as brown as ever one will see. Yup the HMS Crowmead and the HMS Cheesle puzzlewhit are two old tugs that convey sewage abroad, chiefly offloading in Holland, if not Belgium.

Ahoy Ahoy when the sun

Ahoy ahoy when the sun was setting ... up here in the crow's nests after all, just looking out for the odd whale, spouting on the surface, and pumping out gallons of sea water into our faces here on deck. Nothing in sight - no moby dick from high up here - must be down below deep in the bluey depths of dark pacific water with all the blue whales - no white sperma whales for miles. The good ship USS Panspermia has not been seen down here in the waters north of Nova Australasia for some time. Its good captain, Horatio hornblower has gone the way of all flesh with chief petty officer Vincenzo and his able bodied seaman Recuerdo. Probably wrecked on some Fiji shore. Curiosity kills many an indiscreet cat, so bella giornata out the window. So it is Eliza Eliza for ho. Eaten alive by the natives or nibbled to death by some potty amazonian sisterhood tribe. Who knows? It is all a tragedy to see one's friends slowly being nuzzled and nibbled and consumed in a bloody fountain of gore. Kentucky FnC types might say - finger licking good, but let us spare a thought for a great seaman, Vincenzo de Lille and his batman Recuerdo el Cid. Fond thoughts for two sailors of the high seas that are now gone with the wind alongside Reg Butler. We will remember them. Fair thee well lost souls of the Falklands Isles or Islas Malvinas for the red enseigns - more enseign than red of course at the old tub HMS Veckerville. Good souls, lost souls, like the sailors of Farnese who lost their souls to many young syrens around Puerta Mayor.

Ahoy there 20-12

Aha me hearties, this is more like it, the life of the sails on the high seas, squaring off in the rigging, high in the crow's nest, like a couple of old sea dogs, Vin and meself, old veterans of the Cape of Good Hope. Aha yass me boyos there is no life like a big mainsail square-rigger at sea. No sight like the big seas off the coast of Ballycastle, Giants. And this boat, the Duke of Britanny is a fine dandy of a boat. Shame about the sister ship the HMS Venerabile which has been dogged by some big sheilas of storms this weather of late, this past year, lying up she is in dry dock with the SS Duke of Normandy, like an old corvette we used to know called the Guillaume le Conquistant, and now is reduced to a hospital ship near Newfoundland, whose banks are always threatening deep on the Hudson Bay River and muskets afew, bedad bedad. Ahoy there, must get off now, south seas approaching below the Azores and the big sandbanks are dead ahead. Ahoy there captain Hudson and the good midshipman on board the HMS Edmund Campion.

Aha me hearties

Ahoy there shipmates. Tis a black day for the consciences of those evil French captains of those French corvettes over there. They have put into harbour at Brest and found lots of scurvy and legionnaire's disease on board the SS Hudson Huron, the SS Milner Bird, the SS Dingley Tilney, and the Murfax O'Cuivehan, while the dirty old tug and steamer, the French SS Chestleton is still belching out its black smoke all over the islands to the north at Guernsey. Dreadful business all this disease at the port au prince on the SS MV Venerabile QV - a russian corvette in port at the old stopover for the French generals, the St Malo. Anyway we shall head out to the grey Atlantic soon.

Aha Robinson Crusoe

Well ye gads men, shivver me timbers, we have alighted by a desert island in the middle of the ocean not far from the Maldives, and there facing us are two old hasbeens waving their arms and asking for food and freshwater. Poor buggers. Chestleton Brigadier and his batman and his fag Nickelarse Fickleby, both old seadogs from the wreck of a big old glorified tug called the HMS Venerabile, so they say. The captain has gone through his old sea logs and discovered that no such ship ever appeared in battle for the Royal Navy. Maybe a russian man o'war possibly that puts in to these southern harbours for the young girls and some sailor relief. Shivver me timbers, tis two old seadogs from Russia. Special recruits from their university days. And very nicely done, on Crispian's Day too. Still under orders probably - we shall line them up and shoot them. A whole crowd of them slipped out from a mutinous ship in the East India Company once I do recall. Capt Horatio.

Well shivver me timbers

Well there shipmates, it seems that the old tug, the MV Crowmack has pulled out of the French ports of Brest and is heading out in the grey Russian Atlantic to rendezvous with a crowd of Frenchies in their corvettes, including the MV Sherington, a two tonner that likes firing everywhere with lots of loose cannon on deck, the MV Hudson, an old warhorse that loves the sound of her own artillery and gunpowder going off, and the MV Wincanton from ashore at Doylieville who just loves. People mostly. As long as they buy into that infernal 1789 revolution that keeps going off around Europe like some lunetune Marshall Ney. oh and there is the MV De Buicklear O'Donnell, the famous ship built in Ireland but working against the Anglo-Irish Empire of Wellington for the lunatic corporal from Corsica and GBH. So we might deploy the HMS Chestleton against this little coterie of coquettes from Cocove soon, and see what happens to their bright napoleonic smiles on their french faces. Or is it?