Dewey Lambdin - King`s Captain

At the Nore, people had been wounded and killed. Damning insults had been uttered, a republic had been proclaimed, and a rebellion urged, civil war threatened in the mutineers' sneering response to the King's Proclamation {also quoted verbatim, thankee!) and broadsides fired, so there was little mercy for the Nore mutineers. Crown, Admiralty, and Society had been humiliated and taunted enough at Spithead; they were not about to swallow a second, more dangerous dose! Had the mutineers not been drunk on their own words and fantasies, the Nore might have ended much sooner and a lot more peacefully, but their truculence was their doom.

McCann, Richard Parker, and dozen of others were hung as rebels, as well as for being mutineers. Others were transported for life, got long gaol sentences-a stalwart few committed suicide. In the end, most sailors returned to duty, with the gains that Spithead had gotten them and they had already possessed before rising their only comfort-except for the part about removing officers and mates that did not apply to them.

I hope no one minds that Rolston (even I can't recall his first name from The King's Coat. 1) served as a stand-in for Richard Parker… and got what Lewrie thought both deserved. But trust Lewrie to have a host of people in his past who wish to slip him a bit of "the dirty" and give him a comeuppance, a talent pool upon which I may happily draw to challenge, confuse, and plague him. But what would life be like if things ran as smooth as a Swiss watch all the time, hmm?

And we've plagued him pretty sore, by now, ain't we! Old foes, new foes-it was looking rather neat, with Lewrie-1, Baddies-0, 'til that letter showed up. Was it really Lady Lucy Shockley nee Beauman, or Commander Fillebrowne? A lark played by Clotworthy Chute or Lord Peter Rushton? A skewering connived at by Harry Embleton and Uncle Phineas Chiswick; Zachariah Twigg and his spy minions run amok in his dotage? Could it possibly really be Theoni Connor… even Phoebe Aretino, who wants him back… Claudia Mastandrea, still in the pay of French schemers? Admit it, you didn't think of those, now, did you!

Well, no matter for now. He's truly in the "quag," 1797 and 1798 will be an adventurous time.

And even I can't wait to find out what happens!