As the League of Armed Neutrality had readied their navies to confront the Royal Navy, it had been Thermopylae that had been ordered into the Baltic-alone!-to "smoak out" the types and numbers of ships being prepared in Danish, Swedish, and Russian harbours, to determine the thickness of the ice that kept all Baltic navies penned in port, and to ascertain how long it would be before the ice would melt and free them.

Oh, there'd also been the delivery of a pair of Russian nobles to somewhere as close as possible to St. Petersburg… one of whom had tried to kill their new captain as they were being set ashore, an attempted murder right by the entry-port… all over a London whore, of all things!… And for certain the younger Roosky was love-sick mad, but what could be expected of foreigners, and wasn't their new captain a scrapper, though!

Out of the Baltic at last, and there'd been their own British Expeditionary squadrons under Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, and Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, and they'd been just in time to take part in the glorious Battle of Copenhagen and squash the Danes like so many roaches round the galley butter tubs!

All downhill from there, though; first cruising in the Baltic 'til midsummer, watching first Vice-Admiral Parker go home (in a bit of disgrace, the hands had heard-tell) then Nelson departing for his always fragile health, and, at last, a spell of re-victualling and repairs at Great Yarmouth, where the adventures had begun, and a spell of shore liberty. After that, Thermopylae had been seconded to the small North Sea Fleet to serve as a scout, doing much of a boresome much as they did this morning… making her presence known under reduced sail about two leagues seaward of the shoals, and counting windmills, for all the good that Thermopylae's "people" knew.