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Cargos of wool and sheepskin regularly move from Conwy to Douglas, and high quality rum and Manx tea travels in the opposite direction. Occasionally the ships carry gold going north, and zinc or lead or silver on the return trip.
The pirates don’t know what they’ll get until they see the freighters. They might not get anything, but they know that the ships which sit lower in the water are the ones carrying the heavy metals. Even if the cargo is simply sheepskins or rum it’s all valuable and tradeable on the black market.
Given the volume of traffic along the Meirionydd coast the pirates have plenty of opportunities and they know they’ll be lucky sometimes, and seize particularly valuable cargos. Newly minted Sovereigns are the biggest prize. But it’s risky, because the Meirionydd coast is patrolled by the Byddin and their allies, the Garrison, the Sidooryn and the Láigen.
There’s an exchange system in place where personnel from one territory work with another. A detachment of Garrison marines might serve on a Láigen ship for a while. The native services normally use their own languages, although English is common to all of them.
That really helps when there’s a Sidooryn detachment on a Byddin ship for example. Rather than using Manx or Welsh it’s more practical for them all to use English. Which is lucky for the native English speakers who generally struggle with other languages!
On the quayside in Boot, TallyBen has lined up a motley crew of old hands and the involuntary new recruits. Berthed next to them is a dirty, old ship with three masts. The gang plank has been lowered to the quayside, and six people descend. They’re walking with a purposeful stride which conveys the message “we’re in charge here”.
Pausing in the mid distance, they survey the shoddily dressed rabble of misfits. Then come a little closer.
MickeyWarr has already noticed that three of them are carrying swords, and the other three aren’t. That probably means three senior officers, and their juniors. One officer is especially short and has a particularly pompous tricorn hat,
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