Today we're anchored off Fishguard, Wales, a place I visited about three years ago.  It's pretty chilly and kind of gray out so I decided it was a good day to have a sea day.  I had catching up to do on e-mails and some business things so this worked out well.  I did write about the nice history of events in Fishguard when I last visited and to remind myself and anyone else reading this, I've copied some of what I wrote then.  This is the story of the "Last Invasion of Britain." 

In 1797 the French and British were fighting and Napoleon dispatched warships carrying about 1400 troops to land and capture Bristol. The wind didn’t cooperate with the French fleet and they wound up sailing into Fishguard Bay, our port today. The local fort fired its one and only cannon and cannonball as an alarm to the local townsfolk.  The French thought they were meeting stiff resistance so they withdrew and instead landed at a nearby beach in the village  of LLanwnda (good Welsh name).  The French soldiers were a ragtag bunch of mainly recently released jailbirds (Napoleon had his best troops fighting on the continent).  So, when the French came ashore and began plundering the surrounding town and houses they found lots of food and wine and proceeded to get very drunk. A local woman named Jemima Nicholas, who was a cobbler, came down to see what the furor was about dressed in a red cape and a black top hat carrying a pitchfork. She looked so fearsome to some of the drunken French soldiers that she managed to round up 12 of them and march them off to be locked up in the church in Fishguard.  Then she sent word out to the surrounding farms that the women should dress in their red cloaks and black hats, which happened to be everybody’s Sunday best clothing, and stand on the hills above the beaches.  From the French ships the women looked like British soldiers, or at least their drunken state led them to believe that, so after two days the French surrendered.  In the surrender agreement signed in the Royal Oak Pub in Fishguard, the French commander referred to the "several thousand British troops of the line" coming to meet them in battle.  And so ended the last invasion of Britain in February, 1797.

About 15 years before the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Fishguard the townspeople decided to do something to commemorate the event.  They decided to make a tapestry like the Bayeux Tapestry recounting William the Conqueror’s invasion.  Over the next 13 years with the help of an artist who was from the area originally they designed and then stitched a 100-foot tapestry telling the story.  Seventy-three women stitched 41 panels using 154 different colors of threads depicting the events of the invasion.  The pieces were carefully assembled and are on display in the town hall in Fishguard.

Sorry there's nothing new, but I'm taking the lazy road tonight.  Dinner with the captain again tonight.