But Sir James's hurried departure was said to stem from an inconvenient wound acquired in an illegal duel with the master of one of the ships he had been ordered to convoy. Templeton covered his dissimulation: 'And the Melusine, my Lord? It would seem she was in your gift.'

St Vincent looked up sharply. Only recent illness, a congestive outbreak of spring catarrh among the senior clerks, and including his Lordship's secretary Benjamin Tucker, had elevated Templeton to this daily tête-à-tête with the First Lord. Templeton flushed at his presumption.

'I beg pardon, my Lord, I meant only to allude to the intelligence…'

'Quite so, the intelligence had not escaped my recollection, Templeton,' St Vincent said sharply, and added ironically, 'whom had you in mind?'

'No one, my Lord,' blustered the clerk, now thoroughly alarmed that the omniscient old man might know of his connection with Francis Germaney, first lieutenant of the Melusine.

'Then who is applying, sir? Surely we are not in want of commanders for the King's ships?'

The barb drove home. 'Indeed not, my Lord.' The clerks' office was inundated daily with letters of application for employment by half-pay captains, commanders and lieutenants. All were neatly returned from the secretary's inner sanctum where the process of advancement or rejection ground its pitiless and partial way.

'Bring me the names of the most persistent applicants within the last month, sir, and jump to it.'

Templeton escaped with the alacrity of a chastened midshipman while St Vincent, all unseeing, stared at the rolling cumulus, white above the chimneys of Downing Street.

Since the renewal of the war two weeks earlier, officers on the half-pay of unemployment had been clamouring for appointments.