United States or Maldives ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I can call to mind the old three-deckers which used to rot in Portsmouth Harbour, and I have often thought, could they tell their tales, what a missing chapter in our literature they could supply. It is not only in Napoleonic memoirs that the French are so fortunate. The almost equally interesting age of Louis XIV. produced an even more wonderful series.
Exmouth's general design was to concentrate his heavy ships at the southern end of the mole, whence the curve in the line of batteries would enable them to enfilade or take in reverse the works at the northern extremity. Here were to be the two three-deckers, with a seventy-four between them, all three in close order, stem to stern.
The admirals and their three-deckers were observed at noon entering into action in splendid order, French and English advancing in line under steam, and approaching close into the land. The fleet in the lagoon closed in at the same moment, and simultaneously heavy broadsides were poured in from all quarters.
Two others were launched next year, and by the close of 1813 there were twenty-two, of which six were three-deckers of the largest size. Sir Edward gave them every opportunity, and every prudent advantage, but he never could induce them to attack him. They had been forbidden to engage, and the Emperor had hitherto seen nothing to induce him to recall the order.
In the former case, however, although the aggregate numbers were smaller, the disproportion of force was much greater, even after allowance made for the British three-deckers; and we know, from other contemporary remarks of Nelson, that his object here was not so much a crushing defeat of the enemy "only numbers can annihilate" as the disorganization and neutralization of a particular detachment, as the result of which the greater combination of the enemy would fall to pieces.
The French and Spanish fleet comprised thirty-three ships of the line, of which eighteen were French and fifteen Spanish; the British had only twenty-seven, but among these were seven three-deckers as against four on the side of the allies. It had the additional advantage of superior discipline and equipment, to say nothing of the genius of its commander.
But,” said he, “I calculate that in two years we shall have some three-deckers, and then I have a notion you will not dare to stop American vessels without being called to account for it.”
One observation occurred to me then, and I have thought of it ever since with redoubled conviction; this was, that the admiral, after the battle began, was no admiral at all: he could neither see nor be seen; he could take no advantage of the enemy's weak points or defend his own; his ship, the Victory, one of our finest three-deckers, was, in a manner, tied up alongside a French eighty-gun ship.
The ponderous three-deckers of Biscay were notoriously the dullest sailers ever known, nor were the fettered slaves who rowed the great galleys of Portugal or of Andalusia very brisk in their movements; and yet the King might have found time to marshal his ideas and his squadrons, and the Armada had leisure to circumnavigate the globe and invade England afterwards, if a succession of John Rogerses could have entertained his Highness with compliments while the preparations were making.
The "Grand Fleet," as it still was styled occasionally, cruised at sea from June 8th to August 18th, an imposing force of thirty-one ships of the line, eleven of them three-deckers of 90 guns and upwards.
Word Of The Day