Dewey Lambdin - A King`s Commander

Cockburn, hmm… There may be some who could say that I have not been exactly charitable to him. He was one of Nelson's favorite officers, held up as a paragon. Nelson even forgave him for shouldering Agamemnon aside, and putting his commodore aground under fire, later at Oneglia, in his zeal to close the foe. He was the diligent sort who'd not have cared very much for Lewrie's sort, though-never married till he was forty-seven, and that to a cousin, and died without issue-and I think, for the reasons stated in the book, that Lewrie wouldn't have cared for him very much, either. More to the point, I don't, since he was that bugger who invaded the Chesapeake and burned Washington, D.C., and the White House to the ground during the War of 1812!

There was no raid on Bordighera that I know of. I made it all up. That's what writers tend to do when things get slow. Same as "Surfs Up!" when the plot broke down in all those old "beach movies" with Annette Funi-cello; "Beat To Quarters!", do twenty or so rather easier pages and let the good guys slaughter a s… load of Frogs.

Yes, the Austrians did win the Vado Sweepstakes. General de Vins acted like Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg and came down with vapors, a migraine, or something, turning things over to his second-in-command the morning of his battle. They ran like the Yankees at both Battles of Manassas. Nelson lost a lieutenant, a midshipman, and sixteen men at Vado, and his purser was forced to stagger eighteen miles with the fleeing Austrians. There were some units thirty miles from any French outposts, who took off like greased lightning without ever having seen an enemy, without a shot being fired-by them, or at them.

Was that Lewrie's fault? Could a single rifle shot (deuced good 'un; you have to admit!) have been the cause of such a rout? Stranger things have happened. Ask the Yankees again, at that bridge at First Manassas, as we unreconstructed Confederates call it. Yeeeeh-hahhh!

Besides, I think we all know by now that whenever Lewrie turns up, things just sorta kinda happen, and not always for the best. Nor, intentionally. After all, he means well, but…!

So what will happen next? Will Lewrie reconcile with Phoebe? Will Twigg throw him and Claudia Mastandrea together? Will Guillaume Choundas be a raving one-armed lunatic in some French Bedlam, or will he return to plague Lewrie once more? Will Alan settle him, once and for all? Or will he face that court-martial?

Tune in tomorrow… same station, to discover what comes amiss with Lewrie's, and Jester's, Fortune. In the meantime, I will be at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, pondering these matters and trying to find some radical feminist bullies in thong bikinis who wish to kick sand at me.