Sent out to an ignoble sacrifice, Lewrie had learned, for with all the former aristocratic or Royalist-leaning officers of the French Navy dismissed from the service, hunted down for trial and humiliation by the revolutionaries, imprisoned for a time were they lucky… their heads chopped off by the heavy, wicked blade of the guillotine were they not… she had been captained, and her semi-hapless crew led, by former Bosun's Mates and matelots with the "proper" revolutionary attitudes and viewpoints. When she ran afoul of a lighter-gunned British frigate off Rochefort a year later, in '94, all her grace and power had gone for nought and she had abjectly surrendered after a mere quarter-hour's pounding!

Re-named HMS Savage, taking the name of a much older Sixth Rate of 16 guns that had gone to the breakers after serving since 1761, she'd been "bought in" and commissioned into the Royal Navy for a full three years of active service before requiring a "truck to keel" refit, a new crew, and a new captain, and Lewrie had thought himself as fortunate to get her, but…

"Hoy there, fellow!" someone cried nearby. "A boat, at once, I say!" Lewrie turned away from admiring his frigate to espy an officer, a Lieutenant in best-dress uniform, trotting along the quay, chivvying a much older, gap-toothed and one-eyed civilian in charge of a broken-down hand-cart piled with the officer's dunnage, the Lieutenant lending a hand on one of the shafts to speed the handcart along. Lewrie noted the typical sea-chest, much battered and scraped, with its original gay and martial paint nearly faded away; a large canvas sea-bag, and a pair of stuffed-to-bursting portmanteaus made of scrap carpet, to boot, atop the precarious and wobbly cart.