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Updated: June 1, 2025
He told me that our very commanders, nay, our very flag-officers, do stand in need of exercising among themselves, and discoursing the business of commanding a fleet; he telling me that even one of our flagmen in the fleet did not know which tack lost the wind or kept it in the last engagement.
Convinced of the inutility of his own presence at Vicksburg, and preoccupied with the risks threatening his squadron from the unguarded state of the river and its dangerous navigation, it is not wonderful that Farragut, who was the senior of the two flag-officers, thought little of the single ironclad vessel in his neighborhood.
In 1749 an Act of Parliament was passed authorising the Admiralty to grant commissions to flag-officers or any other officer commanding his majesty's fleet or squadron of ships of war, to call and assemble courts-martial in foreign parts. The sudden possession of wealth by the capture of prizes had undoubtedly a deteriorating effect on the minds of many officers of the navy.
Memoir of Sir Thomas Hardy, in Clarke and M'Arthur's Life of Nelson vol. iii. p. 234. Hillyar was then engaged to a lady in Malta. As Lady Nelson's first marriage was in 1779, Josiah Nisbet could not have been eighteen when made a commander, in 1797. Phillimore's "The Last of Nelson's Captains," p. 146. Flag-officers had a share in all prizes taken by vessels of their squadrons. Davison.
He may have had more to say, but his audience could wait no longer. How they shouted and stamped and raved in their delight! Harsh old flag-officers, grave post-captains, young lieutenants, all were roaring like schoolboys breaking up for the holidays. There was no thought now of those manifold and weary grievances to which I had listened.
Nelson then remarked that the junior flag-officers of his fleet had been omitted in this vote of thanks; and his surprise at the omission was expressed with more asperity, perhaps, than an offence so entirely and manifestly unintentional deserved; but it arose from that generous regard for the feelings as well as the interests of all who were under his command, which made him as much beloved in the fleets of Britain as he was dreaded in those of the enemy.
In this rank he remained until after the Battle of the Nile was fought, but it mattered comparatively little where he stood on the list of flag-officers, while Jervis commanded; that he was an admiral at all made it possible to commit to him undertakings for which he was pre-eminently qualified, but which could scarcely have been intrusted to a simple captain by any stretching of service methods, always and not improperly conservative.
Almost all their captains rose to high distinction, and a list of well-known flag-officers may be traced in connection with them, such as, perhaps, was never formed by any other service of the same extent.
"Since you and Sir Gervaise both insist on it so earnestly, Sir Wycherly," returned the rear-admiral, "I must consent; but as it is contrary to our practice, when on foreign service and I call this roadstead a foreign station, as to any thing we know about it as it is contrary to our practice for both flag-officers to sleep out of the fleet, I shall claim the privilege to be allowed to go off to my ship before midnight.
Germany's navy is of such relatively recent origin that its flag-officers are far from possessing either the spirit of resource, or the cleverness and diplomacy for which the commanding generals of the German army are so distinguished. They are men who, officially, intellectually, and socially, are of an inferior calibre, the majority of them being of plebeian birth.
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