“Sir,” remarked Sir Charles, when they did get back, “you wished to see a storm, how did your Majesty like it?”
“So well,” answered the King, no doubt with a most rueful countenance, for he had been fearfully sick, “that I never wish to see another!”
The Admiral remarked in a letter to a friend at the time: “His Majesty was at present as tame as any about him.”
“An epithet,” comments Lord Hervey who had read the letter, “that his Majesty, had he known it, would, I fancy, have liked, next to the storm, the least of anything that happened to him.”
But there were many of these letters came to the Court by the same ship which brought the King’s, and the above passage of words between George and the Admiral was well known in the King’s suite at Helvetsluis, therefore when the Queen walked about with the King’s letter in her hand praising her husband’s patience, and condemning Admiral Wager as the cause of all their apprehension, it was somewhat difficult for the couriers to keep their countenances when they realized the King’s wilful mendacity to his wife.
All the hopes of the Prince’s party were now crushed, but it is not recorded by Lord Hervey that Frederick gave vent to any other remark but that of thankfulness for his father’s return.
His followers, and especially those in the city, while expressing their thankfulness, qualified it; the common expression in referring to the King’s escape was—“It’s the mercy of God, but a thousand pities!”
It is to be feared that had they heard that the Royal Yacht with the King and Madame Walmoden on board, had sunk in mid-Channel, the expression of their thanks might have been the same without the concluding sentence.
The catch query at the time of this voyage was:
“How’s the wind for the King?”