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. 

Ahoy there me hearties

Well splice the old timbers and keep the cannon going, there we are on the high seas again sailing south to the Falkland Islands which we have bought from the French, and there they are again, brazen as a pair of hussies or like two sluts famous all over the cage aux follies of Paris - the SS Chestle O'Black and his screaming little bi-ritual frigates, the SS Douai Fritillation and the SS Dame Edna Everard la Burkette. Three right little brazen sluts that ever saw what little action they do, since they spend all day hiding in their berths and harbours down here near Antarctica. They can't get enough of it. They always run to it, the larsen ice shelf. A bit cold for us down there where they spend most of their days and nights - cold as hell - and there they performing for all and sundry like two slut-waggons of Paris. Anything for a quick fix in Paris. Oh yeah there is no slut like a parisien one. Napoleon himself I am told often sups at those liquid poterion banquets down there - the devil's water it ain't so sweet but those frenchies get used to it. Anyway two faggot carrying barges nowadays with a few token cannons on deck - for all to see, just in case we thought they were the usual troop ships from the French prison island Devil's Island, rather than an honourable anything from the Dardanelles in Turkey. Napoleon - straight to hell.

Aha

Aha up in the crow's nest me hearties - now is that a golden galleon on the horizons or what?

Ship to shore

Well blast me old timbers and sleepers, that is a hot sun out there on a salty sea, what with all the Saltheart Dom Foamfollowers splashing around during the weekly keel-hauling of some poor misbegotten frenchie. We have one this week pulled from a french vessel posing as australian called the SS Swigger Vic which was moored under a petty officer's garb alongside with the SS Peter Joseph, and the french captain of this ship calls himself Giordano Bruno but looks like Dame Edna Everard close up - and with make-up. Honestly I do wonder at times why the old curassiers used to dress up in drag and why the french continue to appoint these odd bon viveurs of 2 left feet to their once esteemed navy. She must have joined for the sea-going agile seamen. Like so many frenchies at the Old Vec. Giordano Bruno would turn in his grave - and so would Capt Josephus i.e. Peter Joseph, of the great southern ports of Woolagong and Brisbane and Tasmania alongside Admiral Peter Elliott O'Shaughnessy and Capt Eric D'Arcy of the south seas. Anyway whatever his various aliases in the bowels of some infernal plot to destabilise the Garibaldi government and wreck the archives of Rome all the way to Paris - jolly well steal the lot as far as we can see for his fat toadie Bonaparte - we cannot verify his elaborate stories that he is just a dirty blackened seaman from some Jamaican slavery ship. We will keel haul this one - wash off the paint and black polish - and see if he comes up the other side, devoid of hammerheads and blues, with the words - wellllllll - !! Ahoy there !!