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Updated: September 27, 2025
We remained at Falmouth twenty-four hours, taking in coal, and repairing the engine, which had sustained considerable damage. On Monday, the seventh, we again started, and made for the Bay of Biscay. The sea was high and the wind strong and contrary; nevertheless, on the morning of the fourth day, we were in sight of the rocky coast to the north of Cape Finisterre.
Finisterre had for her a dark and sinister hatred, and the remarks that she made about her, in her bitter and piercing voice, must have reached their victim. She also abused her host very roundly, beginning to tell me in the fullest detail the history of an especially unpleasant scandal in which he had notoriously figured. I stopped her at last.
In March, 1719, the ill-fated expedition under the Duke of Ormond was formed, and a fleet, destined never to reach its appointed place of rendezvous, sailed from Cadiz. The enterprise met with the usual fate of all the attempts formed in favour of the Stuarts. With the exception of two frigates, none of the ships proceeded farther than Cape Finisterre, where they were disabled by a storm.
So our departure was not enlivening, and, in the smoking-room, the exiles prepared us for lonely ports of call, for sickening heat, for swarming multitudes of blacks. In consequence, when we passed Finisterre, Spain, which from New York seems almost a foreign country, was a near neighbor, a dear friend. And the Island of Teneriffe was an anticlimax.
But the little church where the mass was celebrated stood faithfully beside the older dead; a new church, indeed, had not been built in that forgotten corner of Finisterre for centuries, not since the calvary on its pile of stones had been raised in the tiny square, surrounded then, as now, perhaps, by gray naked cottages; not since the castle with its round tower, down on the river, had been erected for the Counts of Croisac.
She reported that she had fallen in with the French fleet, of twenty-eight sail of the line, off Cape Finisterre; and that they were waiting there to be joined by the Spanish fleet, from Cadiz. The news caused great excitement; but it was scarcely believed, for the Spanish general had given the most amicable assurances to the governor.
Also copies of the reasons given, in writing, by such commanders of his majesty's ships as have been appointed in this war as cruisers on this side cape Finisterre, for leaving their stations, or for coming into port, before the time required by their orders, which papers were sixty-one in number.
I have no memory of what we had to eat that night, but I know that it was all very magnificent and noisy, kind-hearted and generous and vulgar. A great deal of wine was drunk, and by the end of the meal every one was talking as loudly as possible. I had for companion the beautiful Mlle. Finisterre.
The course of the ship was shaped to cross the Bay of Biscay and double Cape Finisterre. The wind was fair, though light, and the heat excessive. Napoleon breakfasted in his own cabin at irregular hours. He sent for one of his attendants every morning to know the distance run, the state of the wind, and other particulars connected with their progress.
What speed were we going when you heaved the log?" "Seven and a half, sir. Perry tells me that she has been doing just that ever since the wind sprang up. I reckon that we are pretty well abreast of Finisterre now. We shall have the sun up in a few minutes, and I expect that it will come up behind the land.
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