United States or Saint Vincent and the Grenadines ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Bay of Biscay tremendous swell Cape Finisterre blockading squadron off Cadiz in shore squadron and so on, all trifle and no plums.

With even such a spirit did the proud Austrian Juno strive to array against her foe a coalition such as Europe had never seen. Nothing would content her but that the whole civilized world, from the White Sea to the Adriatic, from the Bay of Biscay to the pastures of the wild horses of the Tanais, should be combined in arms against one petty state.

I remimber once being becalmed for a fortnight in the Bay of Biscay in a small transport. Skipper and I tried to kill time by playing nap, and we had the stakes low enough at first, but they soon grew higher, for he kept trying to cover his losses. Before the ind of the two weeks I cleared out of him nearly all he had in the world.

The middle-sized gulls, with a black spot at the end of the wings, attend you a little way into the Bay of Biscay. When it blows a hard gale of wind the stormy petrel makes its appearance. While the sea runs mountains high, and every wave threatens destruction to the labouring vessel, this little harbinger of storms is seen enjoying itself, on rapid pinion, up and down the roaring billows.

By the beginning of May, 1813, a great improvement was visible in the equipment and moral of the Spanish and Portuguese troops; a vigorous insurrection against the French occupation had broken out in the province of Biscay, endangering the great road into Spain; and an Anglo-Sicilian army of 16,000 men, under Sir John Murray, had repulsed Suchet, hitherto undefeated, at Castalla on the Valencian coast, without, however, completing their victory, or capturing any of the French guns in the narrow defile by which the enemy fled.

After some delays Colombo arrived in the latter part of July with the French armada at Bermeo, on the coast of Biscay, where he encountered a violent storm, lost his principal ship, and ran to the coast of Galicia, with an intention of attacking Kibaldo, and lost a great many of his men.

For it would not beseem Americans, said Franklin, to fight against one who had earned the admiration of the whole world. The Reprisal did not return home before it had made its presence felt. For, having landed Franklin, Wickes cruised about the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel, capturing many British merchantmen, and taking them to France, where he sold them.

It carried no emigrants and had a passenger list of fashionable folk. On the voyage out to Australia the weather was pleasant, save in the Bay of Biscay; there was no sickness on board, and there were many opportunities for social gaiety, the cultivation of pleasant acquaintances, and the encouragement of that brisk idleness which aids to health.

She had been up the Levant, and cruising among the Ionian Islands, and then back to Gibraltar, and had returned to Malta; and her blue-jackets and marines had landed on the Spanish and French coasts, and, as they had done before on the Biscay shores, had captured forts, destroyed barracks, and other public buildings, and burnt a town or two, and cut out merchant-men and armed vessels of all sorts; indeed, had done as much mischief as they possibly could.

As they crossed the Atlantic, they had encountered the gale to which we have referred, were driven down into the Bay of Biscay, where, as we shall hereafter explain, the vessel was dismasted, and sprang a leak, which baffled all their exertions to keep under.