Outside the Gates of Sultan (revised)

Introduction

"Outside the Gates of Sultan" was originally published as "A Dandy in the Land of Blue Denim 3" at the Blogster.com website on the 30th April 2006. It was re-published with corrections and a new title at the Faithwriters.com website in August 2007.

The Pool of London

If my memory serves me faithfully, some weeks after returning from the Ocean Youth Club trip to the Baltic in the summer of 1975, I sailed with the RNR to La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast of France. La Rochelle was the French city that adopted Reformist ideas during the Renaissance, and thenceforth became the unoffical capital of Protestant France, that is, from the year of the Edict of Nantes (1568). The latter, issued by Henri IV, accorded Huguenots certain rights until 1627, when a British-aided Protestant uprising resulted in the Siege of la Rochelle, during which Cardinal Richelieu blockaded the city for 14 months. Following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685, some 200.000 Huguenots migrated during what has become known as Le Refuge. Among the destinations of the Huguenot diaspora were North America, notably New York and South Carolina, Great Britain and Ulster, Germany, Dutch South Africa and the Netherlands. London became a key Huguenot centre. In South Carolina they rapidly integrated into the nascent Southern Anglo-American society.
My best RNR friend Colin, now a Chief Petty Officer, phoned me only a few years ago from his east London home to remind me of one memorable evening we spent in La Rochelle in the summer of 1975. There, in a dingy dive we fell in with some wild locals led by a Romany-like minstrel and his winsome female companion who spoke to me protectively possibly fearing that as military men Colin and I might be in some physical peril. However, on the way back to our ship from a night club in the early hours of the morning we were set upon not by local cutthroats but a pack of mangy looking pariah dogs, and it was Colin who somehow persuaded them to retreat. It may be that I owe that lovable east London sailor my life.