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During the late war with France, in September 1794, it was nearly destroyed by a French squadron, consisting of one two-decker, several armed ships and brigs, in the whole about seven or eight sail; they appeared in the offing on the evening of the 27th, and in the morning of the 28th at day-light commenced their operations; the result of which was, that the colony was ravaged by the enemy, and many houses burnt and destroyed.
The Columbia, a full-rigged two-decker, two hundred and twelve tons and eighty-three feet long, mounting ten guns, which had been built fourteen years before on Hobart's Landing, North River, was immediately purchased. But a smaller ship to cruise about inland waters and collect furs was also needed; and for this purpose the partners bought the Lady Washington, a little sloop of ninety tons.
"One day I was in the dockyard, looking at a two-decker in the basin, just brought forward for service, and I inquired who was to be the captain. They told me that his name was O'Connor. Then's he's a countryman of mine, thought I, and I'll try my luck. So I called at Goud's Hotel, where he was lodging, and requested to speak with him.
There was also a two-decker pulpit at the east end and over the dim little altar hung an escutcheon of Royal George the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown amid much scroll-work. Like most churches on the Marsh it was much too big for its parish, and if the entire population of Brodnyx and Pedlinge had flocked into it, it would not have been full.
I could not, however, believe that she could see the Nautilus from that distance; and still less that she could know what this submarine engine was. Soon the Canadian informed me that she was a large, armoured, two-decker ram. A thick black smoke was pouring from her two funnels. Her closely-furled sails were stopped to her yards. She hoisted no flag at her mizzen-peak.
"One day I was in the dock-yard, looking at a two-decker in the basin, just brought forward for service, and I inquired who was to be the captain. They told me that his name was O'Connor. Then he's a countryman of mine, thought I, and I'll try my luck. So I called at Goud's Hotel, where he was lodging, and requested to speak with him.
As soon as he saw Wycherly's feet on the poop of the Plantagenet, and his active form freed from the double-bowline, in which it had been seated, the captain made a wide sweep of the arm, to denote his desire to edge away; the helm of the frigate was borne up hard, and, as the two-decker surged ahead on the bosom of a sea, the Druid's bows were knocked off to leeward, leaving a space of about a hundred feet, or more, between the two ships, as it might be, in an instant.
"I dare say it may be, Sir Frederick," answered Lyon; "and if you had been the first lieutenant of a two-decker, off Cape St. Vincent, on the 14th February, 1797, you would have thought as much of him too. Here we were, only fifteen sail in all that is, of vessels of the line with the wind at " "Oh, hang your battle, Lyon, I've heard all that at least seventeen times!"
"By the way, Oakes," said Bluewater, with a sudden interest in such a subject, that he never expected to feel again, "I have heard nothing of the first day's work, in which, through the little I have gleaned, by listening to those around me, I understand you took a two-decker, besides dismasting the French admiral?"
On the 8th of that month, the calm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, off the Chandeleur Islands, were the scene of a grand rendezvous of British naval and military forces. All the vessels of Cockburn's Chesapeake fleet were there, with other men-of-war, transports, and schooners, to the number of fifty vessels. At the head was the towering two-decker "Tonnant," carrying the Admiral's flag.
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