In a thin and fine mist on this particular morning, a cold early-October rain was falling and dripping in great dollops from sails and rigging, over a grey and dingy-white-foamed sea that chopped and hissed and imparted to the frigate a slow and queasy wallowing roll. And the wind… if freed, Thermopylae could cup that wind and rush like a Cambridge coach, nigh on eleven knots or better… yet that wind was wasted on her twice-reefed or gathered sails. And it was a nippy wind, to boot, a raw'un out of the Nor'west, fresh from Arctic ice sheets that made nettled tars wish for their Franklin-pattern stoves to be set up on the gun-deck once again, blow warm breaths into cupped fists, and shiver under their tarred tarpaulins.

HMS Thermopylae's Second Officer, Lt. James Fox, let out a pleased sigh as a ship's boy turned the half-hour glass, then slowly struck Eight Bells up by the forecastle. His watch was done, and hot tea or coffee awaited him in the gun-room below, along with his breakfast. Lt. Fox clapped gloved hands together in joy as his replacement, his old chum Lt. Dick Farley, stepped from the lee side of the quarterdeck to amidships before the double-helm drum and the binnacle cabinet to assume command of the Forenoon Watch.

"A thouroughly miserable day, and I wish ye joy of it, Dick," Lt. Fox said with a grin and a roll of his eyes.

"Worse things happen at sea, Jemmy," Lt. Farley replied as he formally doffed his hat, a second-best and much-battered old thing with its gilt lace gone verdigris green. Fox's wasn't a whit better.

"Just thinking that, in point of fact," Lt. Fox quipped. "So, the usual… wind's still Nor'westerly, we're beam-reaching, as anyone can clearly see, course Nor'East, half East, and making six agonisingly slow knots. What's for breakfast?"

"Scrambled eggs, cheese, and biscuit, speaking of usual," Lt. Farley replied. "Has the captain determined whether we'll exercise at the great-guns this morning?"