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The Chilian admiral, Blanco Encalada, had succeeded in capturing a Spanish fifty-gun frigate, which had been renamed the O’Higgins; but this was only a temporary success; and with his undisciplined and badly-equipped fleet he was quite unable to withstand the threatened attack of the Spaniards. Lord Cochrane had to encounter troubles from the outset.
Admiral Blanco Encalada had just returned from a cruise in which he had succeeded in capturing, in Talcuanho Bay, a fine Spanish fifty-gun frigate, the Maria Isabel; but his fleet was ill-ordered and poorly equipped, quite unable, without thorough re-organization, to withstand the superior force of the enemy.
Various changes made the respective numbers, when operations opened, British thirty-six of-the-line, French thirty-five, with two fifty-gun ships; a near approach to equality. Rodney's faculties were now all alert.
This was a vessel and a force, truly, with which to conquer a fifty-gun ship of the latest type, and with a picked crew. Mr. Carvel's chapter opens with Landais's sudden reappearance on the morning of the day the battle was fought. He shows the resentment and anger against the Frenchman felt by all on board, from cabin-boy to commodore.
They found themselves at anchor with more than a hundred merchant-vessels, among which were to be perceived the lofty masts and spars of a large fifty-gun ship, and two small frigates, which were appointed to convoy them to their destination.
The French fleet had three seventy-fours, seven sixty-fours, and two fifty-gun ships, one of which was the lately captured English "Hannibal." To these Sir Edward Hughes opposed two seventy-fours, one seventy, one sixty-eight, four sixty-fours, and one fifty-gun ship.
Here he happened fortunately to fall under the eye of Sir Home Popham; and Sir Home forthwith rated my brother as a midshipman on board his own ship, which was at that time, I think, a fifty-gun ship the Diadem. Thus, by merits of the most appropriate kind, and without one particle of interest, my brother passed into the royal navy.
She was an old fifty-gun ship, called the Adamant, if I recollect right. One day the first lieutenant, who, like yourn, was a mighty particular sort of chap, was going round the maindeck, and he sees an old pair of canvas trowsers stowed in under the trunnion of one of the guns.
The fifty-gun ship "Leander," which had been taken by the French seventy-four "Généreux," when carrying Nelson's despatches after the Nile, was here recaptured and restored to Great Britain.
The ships-of-war with him raised De Grasse's fleet to thirty-three effective sail-of-the-line and two fifty-gun ships. The object of the united efforts of France and Spain this year was the conquest of Jamaica.
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