THE GUN KETCH

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For those readers unfamiliar with the preceding installments in the adventurous (some would say "reprehensible, nefarious, venal, Just Like a Man, rakehellish squanderings of a ruling-class pig"… and, mind you, this chronicler has heard it all at one time or another-but they're all Politically Correct or smugly moral carpers, so who the bloody hell cares what they think?) life of our heroic, if somewhat lazy Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, allow me to fill you in on some of the highlights of his curriculum vitae.

Epiphany Sunday, 1763: Born a bastard. (Now there's auspicious onset for you!) St. Martin-in-the-Fields Parish, London, of Elisabeth Lewrie, son of Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, Captain of the 4th Regiment of Foot, The King's Own. Mother died soon after, and the infant was raised in the Poor House, employed as an oakum-picker and flax-pounder, which showed his nautical bent before he was out of "nappies" in support of H.M. Dockyards.

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