Dewey Lambdin
King, Ship, and Sword
(Lewrie – 16)
To"The Immortal Memory"
Therefore I cast mee by a little writing
To shewe at eye this conclusion,
For conscience and for mine acquiting
Against God and ageyne abusion,
And Cowardise, and to our enimies confusion.
For foure things our Noble sheweth to mee,
King, Ship, and Swerd, and power of the Sea.
HAKLUYT'S VOYAGES
PROLOGUE
At nobis, Pax alma, veni spicamque teneto,
profluat et pomis candidus ante sinus.
Then come to us, gracious Peace; grasp the
cornspike in thy hand, and from the bosom of thy
white robe let fruits pour out before thee.
Tibullus, Against War,
Book I, X 67-66
CHAPTER ONE
HMS Thermopylae, a 38-gun Fifth Rate frigate, prowled slowly off the Texel to keep a wary eye on the Dutch coast… for several years a conquered "allied" power under French control, now named the Batavian Republic. It was a sullen endeavour for Thermopylae's people, for the Dutch had not much of a fleet left since the Battle of Camperdown, four years before, in 1797, when Adm. Duncan had caught them, headed for the English Channel to combine with their French masters' fleet for an invasion of Great Britain, had forced them to run for home close inshore of their own coast, where Duncan had given them the choice of wrecking on their own shoals or fighting, and had taken, sunk, or burned almost all of them. By now, the few surviving Batavian warships were slowly rotting away at their moorings, their new construction rotting on the stocks, and all their vaunting plans for a larger fleet scrapped.
Sullen, too, was the general attitude aboard Thermopylae after months of dull blockade duty, for it could not hold a candle to the heady and daring adventures of the first of the year of 1801.