Steamboat Willie

. . . he was cursing like a steamboat pilot with his toes in a mangle . . .


Flashman and the Tiger, p.308, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, pilot.

Good advice from Billy Russell

I’ve written about it at length elsewhere – the fearful havoc of embarking, with ships full of spewing soldiers rocking at anchor for days on end, the weeping women who were ordered to stay behind (although my little pal, Fan Duberly, sneaked aboard disguised as a washerwoman), the horses fighting and smashing in their cramped stalls, the hideous stink, the cholera corpses floating in the bay, Billy Russell standing on the quay with his note-book damning Lord Lucan’s eyes – ‘I have my duty, too my lord, which is to inform my readers, and if you don’t like what you’re doing being reported, why then, don’t do it! And that’s my advice to you!’ Of course he was daft and Irish, was Billy, but so was Lucan, and they stood and cussed each other like Mississippi pilots.

Flashman at the Charge, p.59, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Billy Russell, Crimean War.

A fearsome sight

He was a fearsome sight, wrestling at his chain, and cursing like a Smithfield porter.

Royal Flash, p.215, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Smithfield porter.