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Updated: May 11, 2025
The parties accordingly received intimation that they might visit the condemned man, should the latter be disposed to receive them. By this time, something like a general gloom had settled on the ship. The actual state of things was known to all on board, and few believed it possible that Clinch could reach the Foudroyant, receive his orders, and be back in time to prevent the execution.
It only shows that his court wanted common sense as much as he wanted discretion. The expedition was destroyed, and the Foudroyant had the whole honour of the victory. An action between single ships of this force is rare at any period, and nothing could be nearer a match in point of equipment then the two ships.
The Antelope being unable at the time to open her lower-deck ports in consequence of the heavy sea, it took her two hours to capture the privateer, which even then would probably have got off, had not her mizen-mast been shot away. An action, celebrated in naval song, was that between the Monmouth, of 64 guns, commanded by Captain Gardiner, and the Foudroyant, of 84 guns.
Between two or three weeks afterward, when the king was on board the FOUDROYANT, a Neapolitan fisherman came to the ship, and solemnly declared that Caraccioli had risen from the bottom of the sea, and was coming as fast as he could to Naples, swimming half out of the water. Such an account was listened to like a tale of idle credulity.
On the twenty-eighth day of March he fell in with a French squadron, commanded by the marquis du Quesne, consisting of four ships, namely, the Foudroyant, of eighty guns, the Orphée, of sixty-four, the Oriflamme, of fifty, and the Pléiade frigate, of twenty-four, in their passage from Toulon to reinforce M. de la Clue, who had for some time been blocked up by admiral Osborne in the harbour of Carthagena.
It was in the midst of such signs of expectation that the call of the boatswain was heard piping the side on board the Foudroyant, and four side-boys lay over on the accommodation-ladder, a mark of honor never paid to one of a rank less than that of a captain.
That very morning had he been seized and sent on board the Foudroyant; in the cabin of that vessel had a court of his own countrymen convened; and there had he been hastily condemned to death. The hour of doom was near, and he was already in the ship where the execution was to take place.
"I remember it!" interrupted Sir Gervaise, in a clear strong voice, his eye flashing with something like the fire of youth "I remember it! Le Foudroyant was on our starboard beam; le Pluton a little on our larboard bow Bunting had gone aloft to look out for Bluewater no poor Bunting was killed "
Fortunately, the "Foudroyant" had resumed her station off the island; and it was a singular illustration of the good fortune of the "heaven-born" admiral, to repeat Ball's expression, that she arrived barely in time, only a few hours before the event, her absence from which might have resulted in the escape of the enemy, and a just censure upon Nelson.
Captain Gardiner of the "Monmouth," a ship of four hundred and seventy men and sixty-four guns, engaged the French ship "Foudroyant," carrying a thousand men and eighty-four guns of heavier metal than those of the Englishman. Gardiner had lately been reproved by Anson, First Lord of the Admiralty, for some alleged misconduct or shortcoming, and he thought of nothing but retrieving his honor.
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