Forward I have served our nation in the service of His Majesties Royal Navy for more years than I care to remember progressing in that time from midshipman to captain. Over the years, I have witnessed much to take pride in and much that in all honesty I find to horrific to dwell upon in conversation. Along with the men of my ships company and our faithful ship HMS Advantage we have together taken part in several sea battles including the greatest of them all Trafalgar. The loss of Admiral Lord Nelson shocked the nation but the Royal Navy deprived Napoleon of his ambition to rule the waves stopping him becoming the dominant maritime power with his ambition of European expansion. A musket ball severed Nelson's spine but he lived long enough to hear he had won the battle. Death and destruction in such a confined battleground have always gone together aboard ship and the sadness that brings has never been far away. The grim reaper has always demanded his payment, to many a sailor the loss of a limb is a small price to pay for escaping the clutches of the reaper.
He slowly turned his gaze back to the lake, he looked at the swan, it flexed its wings and in a brief moment its head changed shape and he found himself looking into the face of a person he knew so well, he closed his eyes, and looked again, it was just a swan, was his mind playing tricks. The swan was now beating its wings vigorously, the sound of the wings slapping the water's surface disturbed the silence. It was moving faster now, out across the lake on its take off run, Richard remained watching as it flew gracefully from the surface of the water and climbed high into the sky growing smaller as the distance between them increased. Had he seen a ghost or was it purely an over active mind had he in fact witnessed the strange phenomena classified as paranormal activity. I suppose it depends what you believe in or totally disregard
It sounded like a routine request when admiralty issued the order but in reality they had no idea how our squadron would carry out such a task. Portsmouth headquarters issued every item of information they held that might assist us in our search at the explicit order of Admiral Sir Henry Fairfax the Commander of both the naval yard and the ships assigned. Six ships would sail the known slave routes in search of this illusive "Slave Trader" who was reported to be an Englishman of some considerable standing among merchants. We faced a considerable obstacle, searching thousands of miles of ocean from known slave ports to the Windward Islands and the Americas beyond but remained confident that we would eventually triumph over adversity. Our research was beginning to slowly yield results but we needed to be thorough, a wrong assumption could result in days or even weeks of wasted effort. As we set sail from Portsmouth we knew we had a formidable task before us but we remained positive.
