Shore Leaving

Naval Britishness is putting out in Norfolk, where a signal misunderstanding of the Freedom of the Seas has led the North Sea to the presumption of eroding the coast. This thalassic thoughtlessness is expected eventually to affect a graveyard containing the remains of a hundred and nineteen sailors drowned two and a quarter centuries ago, when HMS Invincible was soundly defeated on her way to the First Battle of Copenhagen by a pilot who had apparently had enough of listening to experts. Those bodies that were washed ashore were buried in a mass grave which, in the great British tradition of reverence for plucky little servicepersons, remained unmarked until 1998 when a stone was put up with the line from Revelation about the sea giving up its dead. Rather than risk bits of human anatomy protruding from the landscape, the idea has been floated that the remains should now be exhumed and sent back to Davy Jones's locker, thereby belatedly correcting the sea's ill-mannered refusal to consume what it was given.