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Sir Gervaise Oakes, as a matter of course, watched the progress of the two lines with close and intelligent attention. Mons. de Vervillin did the same from the poop of le Foudroyant, a noble eighty-gun ship in which his flag of vice-admiral was flying, as it might be, in defiance.
Do you know, lieutenant, how many oaks go to make an eighty-gun ship?" My father shook his head. "Two thousand, no less. For every two-decked ship that carries the white ensign there is a grove the less in England. So how are our grandsons to beat the French if we do not give them the trees with which to build their ships?"
The same day the frigate "Phoebe" rejoined, with information that a French eighty-gun ship had anchored in Ajaccio on the evening of the 19th, dismasted and crippled.
He then asked what men-of-war were with them at that time; all which he gave a very good account of, saying, Sir Charles Wager and Rear-Admiral Walton commanded; Sir Charles carrying a red flag at the fore-topmast head of the Torbay, and the latter a blue at the mizen of the Cumberland, both eighty-gun ships.
This consisted of some twenty-five ships of the line, and sixteen frigates or corvettes under the command of Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse, in the Montague, of 120 guns; besides this ship, considered so enormous in those days, there were three of 110 guns, and four eighty-gun ships, all the rest being seventy-fours.
On the 11th of March, 1803, he was appointed to the eighty-gun ship Tonnant, in which, after some delay, occasioned by the general difficulty of procuring men, he joined the Channel fleet.
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.
True it is, that those who undertook to vindicate him on the spot, asserted, that there was not water enough for our great ships near the town: though this was a little unfortunately urged, because there happened to be pilots in the fleet perfectly well acquainted with the soundings of the harbour, who affirmed there was water enough for five eighty-gun ships to lie abreast almost up to the very walls.
He had to bring the wind on the starboard quarter of his little sixty-four, in order to reach the seventh in the enemy's line, which was an eighty-gun ship, carrying the flag of the French admiral. This post, by professional etiquette, as by evident military considerations, Byng owed to his own flag-ship, of equal force.
Although this eighty-gun ship was much bigger than his own, "absolutely large enough to take Agamemnon in her hold," Nelson said, the latter saw his chance, and instantly seized it with the promptitude characteristic of all his actions.
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