King, Ship, and Sword

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HMS Thermopylae, a 38-gun Fifth Rate frigate, prowled slowly off the Texel to keep a wary eye on the Dutch coast… for several years a conquered "allied" power under French control, now named the Batavian Republic. It was a sullen endeavour for Thermopylae's people, for the Dutch had not much of a fleet left since the Battle of Camperdown, four years before, in 1797, when Adm. Duncan had caught them, headed for the English Channel to combine with their French masters' fleet for an invasion of Great Britain, had forced them to run for home close inshore of their own coast, where Duncan had given them the choice of wrecking on their own shoals or fighting, and had taken, sunk, or burned almost all of them. By now, the few surviving Batavian warships were slowly rotting away at their moorings, their new construction rotting on the stocks, and all their vaunting plans for a larger fleet scrapped.

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