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they knew more about such matters than sailors. What was the point of asking the general in command of the troops for an opinion on an operation then utterly ignoring it, which is precisely what Hood had done?
    Success at Bastia had not dented his belief that the whole endeavour had been in error, not an act of supreme military necessity, more a sop, and a bloody one, to please the Corsicans, as well as the King’s proposed viceroy of the island, Sir Gilbert Elliot. Yes, Calvi too would fall, but at what cost and to whose advantage when all the fleet needed was the bay they already occupied?
    At least he had gained something from the farce, finally having got rid of an irritation that had caused him concern, namely Midshipman Toby Burns. The youngster had gone out on a night raid on the fortifications of Calvi and had not returned, so he was assumed to have perished, a satisfying result given the trouble Hotham had gone to in getting the lad into harm’s way. Time and again, since the siege of Toulon, he had volunteered Burns for service where theshot and shell flew, only for the little sod to emerge, if not unscathed, with wounds nowhere near fatal.
    What had the world come to, he wondered and not for the first time, when a man of his rank, age and experience had to worry about a lowly creature like Burns? Yet the little toad had impinged on his consciousness for the very simple reason that he had the power to cause serious trouble.
    In the process of cracking a walnut, the thoughts on which he was ruminating made him apply too much pressure, which shattered the kernel as well as the shell. Thus the same midshipman who had knocked earlier, to enter on his command, found his admiral crouched down and picking up pieces of nut from the carpeted floor.
    ‘Signal from
Victory
, sir, requesting that you repair aboard.’
    If the position in which Hotham found himself could be described as humiliating, the thought could not be avoided that he was being invited to suffer yet more of the same.
    ‘Acknowledge,’ he snapped with clear irritation, which sent the lad, a mere stripling, thirteen years of age, scurrying out.

    If John Pearce had serious reservations about the King’s Navy and his place in it, there was no gainsaying the fact that they could be a hospitable lot. His boat crew were on the lower deck, having been handsomely looked after, chinwagging with their fellow tars and no doubt boasting away about the action they had taken part in off Portugal, in which they had saved a postal packet from being taken by privateers.
    If their commanding officer was sure they would be gilding it, turning what was a skirmish, albeit a satisfyingone, into a great and deadly battle, he was equally certain he was not, for when it came to recounting his own exploits, weariness of repetition was added to a determination not to show away.
    He had eaten well and drunk of wine better than that aboard most naval vessels, for the town of San Fiorenzo had been under French control and they never stinted on the supply of such luxuries, which had naturally been taken over wholesale. He was likewise much taken by the fact that, since the last time he had dined in this very wardroom, there were so many new faces among the fifteen lieutenants present, one more being on watch.
    Polite enquiry informed him of those who had been promoted out and to where – not that he truly recalled their names or their faces – as well as the fellow who had died of the bloody flux after a marathon session to taste as many of the bottles as possible that had been looted from the French stores.
    All this was related before he was drawn into describing the successful battle in the English Channel that had seen him promoted at the hand of King George himself from midshipman to his lieutenancy. What he feared was approaching and Pearce knew there was no avoiding it: a raft of questions would follow his deliberately dull recounting as these young men, and they were all