REAR-ADMIRAL Sir Marcus Drew stood to one side of a window and idly watched the comings and goings of people and carriages outside the Admiralty. Like the other windows in his spacious room it was tall and broad and enabled him to distinguish the passers-by from the more regular visitors who daily, hourly even, thronged the Admiralty corridors in search of employment. Captains, young and not so young, some of whose exploits had once brought pride and hope to an England at war. Seeing the most persistent applicants, and having his subordinates turn the majority away, took much of the admiral's time. He studied some puddles in the road left by a sudden shower. Now they shone like pale blue silk, reflecting the April sky while the clouds receded across London.

For this was spring 1792, another year of uncertainty and threats of danger from across the Channel. But you would not think as much to watch the ladies in their frivolous gowns and bright colours, with their carefree, posturing escorts.

Two years back, when news of the bloody revolution in France had hit London like a broadside, many had feared that the butchering, the murderous mobs and their guillotines would somehow spread their horror across the Straits of Dover. Others, naturally enough perhaps, had found comfort in their old enemy's terrible change of circumstances.

It might have been better if England had put aside the rules of war for once and attacked the French when they were caught in their own turmoil. But that had not even been considered.

Drew turned away, his day, and the thought of dining later on in St James's with some whist afterwards, turned sour.

Their Lordships of Admiralty expected miracles if they imagined that the fleet, left to rot in harbours and estuaries for most of the ten years since the American Revolution, could suddenly be rebuilt to anything approaching its old strength. Thousands of seamen and marines had been thrown on the beach, unwanted by a nation for which so many had died or been maimed in the King's name. Officers, too, left on half-pay if they were lucky, begging for berths in the merchant service, trying to return to the sea which had been their chosen life.