Fifteen minutes later, with Rogers beside him, he sat at the helm of a dockyard boat feeling the tiller kick gently under his elbow. The wind was keen on the water, kicking up sharp grey wavelets and whipping the droplets from the oar blades. The sun was already well down in the western sky.

'She's the inboard end of the western trot,' said the boatman curtly as he pulled upstream. Drinkwater and Rogers regarded the line of ships moored two and three abreast between the buoys. The flood tide gurgled round their bluff bows. Two huge ninety-eights rode high out of the water without their guns or stores, laid up in ordinary with only their lower masts stepped. Astern of them lay four frigates wanting men, partially rigged but with neglected paintwork, odd gun-ports opened for ventilation or the emergence of temporary chimneys. Upper decks were untidy with lines of washing which told of wives living on board with the 'standing officers', the warrant gunners, the masters, carpenters and boatswains. Drinkwater recognised two battered and decrepit Dutch prizes from Camperdown and remembered laying Cyclops up here in '83. There had been many more ships then, a whole fleet of them becoming idle at the end of the American War. The boatman interrupted his reverie.

'Put the helm over now, sir, if'ee please. She be beyond this'n.' Drinkwater craned his neck. They began to turn under the stern of a shot-scarred sloop. The tide caught the boat and the two oarsmen pulled with increased vigour as they stemmed it. Drinkwater watched anxiously for the stern of Virago.