Ahoy there me hearties

Oh yass lads and lassies of the poop deck, that was some big blow in from the South China seas, with a queer lot of cabin boys washed overboard before the captain could save those little oriental legs. A grand shame and a great loss to the Navy at this time when they is needed for the Boxer rebellion I shall say. Also the gods of Neptune are naught on these trips this weather - a right evil sea of evil intent - a troubled ocean and huge waves as high as houses rising above and over the decks. Ye crikes, ye gads, these are not grand waters for an old essex man like meself. We shall shortly be approaching San Francisco Bay me hearties and we shall put in there for a day and a jog and see what we can do to replenish our stores. Capt Peter Joseph on the deck now. A likely lad.

Ahoy me hearties

Oh yass, that was no fitting end for dear old Capt Bryant, lost overboard in the rivers of the Amazon and the south seas, while trying to save the old ship, HMS Venerabile. A bad day for business on the high seas. No trace of the old captain since found, but one never knows, maybe he ended up with the islanders on their big canoes and boats deep inside the coastline of Brazil. So we shall not see his like again me hearties, save maybe surrounded with garlands and enjoying his new life.

Ahoy there

Here we are taking soundings from the old plumbline as we approach canadian waters me hearties, me lads, me old herrings, me old soused scads. Not canada as such of course ye will understand - this is New Scotland but there are some Frenchies and bald hurons around, like the shipmates on the HMS Venerabile over yonder, if that is a real Royal Enseign they is flying. Bald as bats, deaf as coots. Terrible predicament. Lost their captain overboard, Capt Bryant, in a river-fight with the local indian innuit eskimo natives. Buried at sea - presumed dead. Vicar on board conducted the service. Venerabile distraught - like they knew the guy, like the married the chief petty officer or somat. Or somat. Up the hudson river now - sailed away maybe.

Splice the mainbrace

Ahoy there shipmates and mateys of the foredeck, 'tis time to put out to sea again in search of all them Spanish galleons full of the gold of the Aztecs. A shocking business, doing in the Aztecs just for their gold. But helas me shipmates such is the greed of the French and the ambition of the Spanish, to have killed an entire unspoilt Adam and Eve nation and its lovely pristine empire just to steal their gold and have their beautiful wives subjected to their allies, the Arab slave-traders of Mozambique, and today we are off on the high seas in search of two French corvettes working with the Spanish, the SS Marcus Tullius and the SS Andronicus Hadden, and these blighters, shipmates if you will believe me, are shifting a lot of stolen second rate gold around the Golden Carib. Ahoy there shipmates.

Ah the old HMS Cheshire Cheese

Ahoy there lads, there never was a ship like the old HMS Cheshire Cheese, and her captain, the able Capt Shackleton, the real one from Elton Hall, but helas ghosted these many years by the flagship of the French Napoleonic Forces, the SS Fromage de Cheeslecake, captained by a long-serving Russian called Dimitriov Aurora, who spent all his formative years spying on the Royal Navy from Cambridge to Germany and on then to the waters of the Med where he used to meet his handlers near Turkey on board the Russian steam packet cruiser the SS Casaroli while ostensibly dropping flower petals to war graves on Skyros. Ah yes the Cheshire Cheese was much shadowed, and we do say shadowed, and ghosted by this Black Pearl low life soviet-style captain of the old Hanseatic Navy in olden days before the war, churning up the waters of the Scottish coast and stopping often at Ullapool to pick up his trinkets, before Napoleon crowned himself in Paris by robbing the crown from the hands of the archbishop of Paris. Before Wellington finally brought the old lowlife flotsam of France to book at the Battle of Waterloo - with the aid of the Prussian General Blucher. Napoleon was captured fleeing from the Battle in his red riding hood cape and cloak, hiding in an ornate carriage while the little remnant of his surrounded Imperial Old Guard faced the final request for surrender, and on refusal, duly were executed by the victorious allied forces in a final musket volley. Ahoy there lads, that old boot, was something of a neck - he pushed his luck all his miserable squat self-important life. And others paid the price of his egotism.

A wreck

So there it is as we are passing over an old naval graveyard - the Wreck of the Deutschland. A nice smooth lean ship but a bit shallow in the draught, though the shipbuilders that laid her up at Kiel always said she was built for speed. A nice ship that was oft seen on the Northern Runs to the Hanseatic ports and then in later life on the runs to Saudi Arabia. Shame she went down at the end of her life with all hands on deck. The captain was a nice enough sort of chap, Captain JR Ewing O'Shaughnessy, but he was from Hannover and into all the usual trappings of German high careers, chiefly duelling with swords, so a bit of an old-fashioned aristo. Yes a sad day for General Blucher of the Prussian Home Guard and his uffiziellen such as Captain Siegen, and Captain Shallenberg, when they lost all overboard in the Wreck of the Deutschland. Shame. JR RIP.

Aha BC RIP

Ah now lads, ah now lads, there was a mighty Temeraire if ever I saw one, the HMS Chestleton RIP whose passing below the waves we commemorate this year. She was a mighty waggon built for speed, and there lay her eventual problem. Her crew were hyper-active, they did not believe in legitimate response, and the captain was always trying to anticipate the French rather than follow them and respond accordingly. A nice ship the Chestleton and much given to 21 gun salutes whenever she saw her queen, the young Victoria, and even in her young days, the young William IV. Ah yes a mighty warship retired often though somewhat prematurely when it was thought that steam fighting ships after the USS Lexington would take over the high seas, but she saw action here and there. An honourable member of the Royal Over-Seas League, the headquarters of which her captain, the young Cormac le Vincent and his chief petty officer Patricke le Venerable, often visited in London, and much given to supporting our Russian allies on the Royal Hannoverian Hanseatic League Run. Greenwich Naval College and the Chatham Shipbuilders will miss this one. HMS Chestleton RIP. Sad to see her go, but she was sunk when hit in the midships, just as she was approaching her home port of Milford Haven. Caught by a French skip. Anyway, a sad day for all concerned.