In early 2004, Captain Ignatius Duffie and his motley crew of HMS Blackwater were approaching the end of the 200 years banishment to the nautical hereafter. The sentence handed down at their court-martial in 1806 for executing one of the worst blunders in the annals of the Royal Navy.
The sinking of herself and another Navy vessel in the same incident! Considering they were all ghosts anyway, all in all it hadn’t been a bad experience; especially the last fifty years, spent wiling away their time in a sleepy harbour on the east coast of England.
They would have made the full distance to the impending review of their situation by their Lordships of the Admiralty if, one warm Friday afternoon in May, two of the crew members had not been engaged in conversation with the thirteen year old twins of the Price family while waiting in a supermarket check-out queue.
This chance assignation, the first occasion they had ever been seen by a live person since their demise, set in motion a chain of events that would take the old Barque and her crew on a journey to eight countries on three continents in pursuit of the perpetrators of the most infamous theft of historical artefacts in British history.
In the process, three 21st century, bicycle riding, net surfing, pupils of Windford High School would learn about life in the old Royal Navy, about friendship and camaraderie and all about themselves. They would make friends no one else would ever meet and have a story to tell that no one else would ever believe.
