Ahoy - 25 mayo 13

In the crow's nest the sun is a terrible woe - scorches the shirt of your back me hearties. Shivver me timbers would be better. And look there is the old warboat tug the SS Aurora still pulling out and sailing the 7 seas with captain Christopher on board and his petty officers and largely african crew. A bit of a slave trade merchantman that one it has to be said, but hearken, tis the old flag of Republican France and the colours of Napoleon fluttering there from the stern and not the Royal Enseign. Behind is her sister ship, the SS Rosie-crucia and two escort corvettes from the French navy, the SS Angel and the SS Revolution, always with a full compliment of French republican marines. Quite a little flotilla this one. Still we might give them a run for their money and deploy the HMS Archangel - she has a full complement of cannonry - with her escort man of war the HMS Osterreich.

Ahoy

Well me hearties, we are on the rudder today, steering the HMS Repulse through unchartered waters in the southern seas to the south of Tasmania where the young devilish captain Eric D'Arcy is pilotting a curious rag bag of ships in his colonial flotilla. His own old tugboat cum flagship of the Hudson is the SS Paedoscare was originally commissioned in Germany on the coast at Kiel not a million miles from Bonn, where a secret meeting of old guard shipwrights put together a plan to blow a hole in the western navies of UK & Ireland, and these seadogs were fighting like the doyliedog seapitbull terrier of a tug as ever for the grey longcoats of the avid Russians and the pot-boiler French. The old Prussian general Blucher would have turned in his grave had he ever found about this little secret group of seadogs and their boys who wished to plunge the western navies into crisis not once but every week if not every year. Funny how little cunning napoleons blackmail whole nations and alliances into crisis. Funny how old German admirals should know better than to traduce their own alliance and their own country, but these grey higgs-bosons were on the up and up and wanted to make a name for themselves and their old grey Russian longcoats and liberal friends of Le Terreur of 1789. Revolutions - who actually needs them!!

Alors

Have got Captain Le Vin here in the Captain's mess and shortly we shall go for a short stroll around the poopdeck here on HMS Repulse. He is tired and needs a break, and I am encouraging him to splice the mainbrace a little when he sails out of port today at Capetown and off to calmer waters than these. In his own flotilla he has too many French spies for Napoleon - this is his problem.

Shivver me timbers

Well well there's a hapless tug of a barney if ever I saw one, the USS Admiral James Butt, founding ship of the argentine navy one day they say, high-tailing it away from the Newfoundland sandies and bars and banks up the St Lawrence River with the USS Jeremy Hudson. Two american corvette square riggers that have been hanging around the stricken and sinking USS Lexington this last week around the coast of North Carolina, while she has been offloading men and materielle for Washington. A sad and sorry tale that only the HMS Lavinia can tell, with due apologies lads to Signor Shakespeare.

All Hail

Hail to the mighty Temeraire, a lovely ship worth every penny of the huge oak beams on board that great hulk, that great bulk. Today we are pulling alongside a stricken vessel, the SS Vincenziana that is fresh out of the port of Venice, but has been leaning to for some time, on account of the heavy coals in the store down below, in the keep of the keel. An old waggon of a workhorse, she has been in and out of so many Med ports and Arab ports now at this late stage of her life, that she is looking very old and grey, and very weathered, since those arab ports take so much out of an old waggon. Cairo a favourite stop with the MV Fitzgarrat, but she has worked on the coals to Newcastle run for so long, that nobody can recall what she is and who she is, though she just keeps thumping tubs and tugs to recognise here in an aggressive display of false flags, and her captain, Johann the Swabian keeps insisting that she brave one more trip out there in the real world and that she consigns all unruly boyish sailors on board to the gulags of the plains of Siberia, not that there are many left there. She hopes to continue opening accounts in China though, and with the emperor's help to continue running her gulags there for naughty schoolboys and scallywags and ragamuffins from the mean streets of Britain. All face the gulag on board that old tugboat.

A flagship

Shivver me timbers lassies, there is a big bottomed lady of the lines if ever I saw one, not a Spanish Hind full of new world gold amazingly, but a tea clipper selling lots of tea as coffee in far-flung ports like Dublin, and adding in their own share of sheep's dung for flavouring in Russian taverns. Yes the USS Macdonald of the line is no Lexington, that's for sure, but boy does she move fast around the globe, but always selling tea as coffee. Learnt nothing from the buddha or his buddhist monks at how to make red robe tea, but maybe tea there at home in China is too expensive for her. Captained by a loose rag-bag assortment of sailor boys, press-ganged from Russian ports, she stays afloat by laying up for days at ports like L'eau vive in Switzerland. Money her only downfall - shed-loads of it and which she shells out to all the sailor boys of the French cinque ports.

Ye gads

Well Oi, as they say on the Algarve coast, splice the old rum sailors on the high seas, here we are coming into port today near the Azores, and there are a couple of old Russian freighters in dry dock, the MV Crippin and the MV Gabrielavich, nightmares to follow these two ships, and very fast on foot, despite their very wide keels, and wider bows. Lost at sea these types for much of the year, always on Awol alert, but somehow seem to turn up on the French side of every debate and every argument in every alehouse. Two Russian tugs really, pushing old coal about for most captains, but these two captains do know how to talk the hind legs off a donkey. Captain Willy She's-your-Man Doyle is the captain of the MV Gabrielavich and Capt Francesca Higgins-Boseyon is the captain of the second ship the MV Crippin. A first for the Russian navy - a woman that doesn't look like a man. A right pair of Russian old guard retards. HMS Repulse sounding out and away onto the 7 seas.