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December, the carronades were all on their slides, the light swivels in their mountings and the two long guns at their stern ports in Drinkwater’s cabin. The appearance of the two cold black barrels upon which condensation never ceased to form, brought reality to both Mrs Jex and to Drinkwater himself. To Mrs Jex they disturbed the domestic symmetry of the place, to Drinkwater they reminded him that a bomb vessel was likely to be chased, not do the chasing.
    Virago had been built as one of a number of bomb ships constructed at the beginning of the Seven Years War. She was immensely strong, with futtocks the size of a battleship. Though only 110 feet long she displaced 380 tons. She would sit deep in the water when loaded and, Drinkwater realised, would be a marked contrast to the nimble cutter Kestrel or the handy brig Hellebore. She was reduced to a tender by the building of a newer class of bomb vessel completed during the American War. Normally employed on the routine duties of sloops, the bomb vessels only carried their two mortars when intended for a bombardment. For this purpose they loaded the mortars, powder, carcases and shells from the Royal Artillery Arsenal at Woolwich, together with a subaltern and a detachment of artillerymen. The mortars threw their shells, or bombs (from which the ships took their colloquial name) from the massive wooden beds Drinkwater had left in place on Virago. The beds were capable of traversing, a development which had revolutionised the rig of bomb vessels. As of 1759 the ketch rig had been dispensed with. It was no longer necessary not to have a foremast, nor to throw the shells over the bow, training their aim with a spring to the anchor cable. Now greater accuracy could be obtained from the traversing bed and greater sailing qualities from the three-masted ship-rig.
    Even so, Drinkwater thought as he made one of his daily inspections, he knew them to be unpopular commands. Virago had fired her last mortar at Le Havre in the year of her building. And convoy protection in a heavily built and sluggish craft designed to protect herself when running away was as popular as picket duty on a wet night. So although the intrusion of the stern chasers into the cabin marked a step towards commissioning, they also indicated the severe limitations of Drinkwater’s command.
    However he cheered himself up with the reflection that Virago would be sailing in company with a fleet, the fleet destined for the ‘secret expedition’ mentioned in every newspaper, and for the ‘unknown destination’ that was equally certain to be the Baltic.
    Even as Mr Matchett belayed the breechings of the intrusive six-pounders, muttering about the necessity of a warrant gunner, Drinkwater learned of the collapse of the Coalition. The Franco-Austrian armistice had ended, hostilities had resumed and the Austrians had been smashed at Hohenlinden. Suddenly the Baltic had become a powder keg.
    Although Bonaparte, now first consul and calling himself Napoleon, was triumphant throughout Europe, it was to the other despot that all looked. Sadistic, perverted and unbalanced, Tsar Paul was the cynosure for all eyes. The thwarting of his ambitions towards Malta had led to mistrust of Britain, despite the quarter of a million pounds paid him to which a monthly addition of Ł75,000 was paid to keep 45,000 Russian soldiers in the field. When Napoleon generously repatriated, at French expense, 5,000 Russian prisoners of war after Britain had refused to ransom them, Tsar Paul abandoned his allies.
    The Tsar’s influence in the Baltic was immense. Russia had smashed the Swedish empire at Poltava a century earlier, and Denmark was too vulnerable not to bend to a wind from the east. Her own king was insane, her Crown Prince, Frederick, a young man dominated by his ministers.
    When the Tsar revived the Armed Neutrality he insisted that the Royal Navy should no longer be able to search neutral ships, particularly for naval stores,