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Updated: May 31, 2025
By four in the afternoon of the 29th they got the ship afloat, and cut away their small bower anchor, but ran aground again in ten minutes. At nine they carried out the kedge-anchor, but the hawser broke in heaving. They now carried out another hawser, having a lower-deck gun fixed to it, as they had now lost all their anchors, and were still aground.
As he descended the ladder the upper-deck was ringing with bugle-calls, and the turrets' crews were already swarming round their guns. From the hatchways leading to the lower-deck came a great roar of cheering. Men poured up on their way to their action stations in a laughing, rejoicing throng.
Saumarez had a very narrow escape: at the moment he was pointing a gun on the lower-deck, of which he had the command, a shot from the fort entered the port-hole, struck the gun, and killed seven out of eight men who were stationed to work it. Some time afterwards, being called on deck to execute certain orders respecting the replacing the spring on the cable, he was standing close to Mr.
Try a shot from the lower-deck at her, Sir Ed'ard. "'It goes over her. "'Beat to quarters, and fire coolly and deliberately at her masts and yards.
Long before this hour, the greater number of the whole ship's company have dressed themselves and are ready for muster; but the never-ending sweepers, the fussy warrant-officers' yeomen, the exact purser's steward, the slovenly midshipmen's boy, the learned loblolly boy, and the interminable host of officers' servants, who have always fifty extra things to do, are often so sorely pressed for time, that at the first tap of the drum beating to divisions, these idlers, as they are technically much miscalled, may often be seen only then lugging their shirts over their heads, or hitching up their trousers in all the hurry-scurry of a lower-deck toilet.
It was that or nothing; and he felt rich enough to pay for it himself if the Bird of Prey, who had cabled him to come out to Carlsbad as his secretary, would not stand the difference between the price and that of the lower-deck six-in-a-room berth which he would have taken if he had been allowed a choice.
The result of these actions made it clear that turret-ships to be of any use must be armoured, and as a first experiment it was decided to cut-down the Royal Sovereign, a ship of the size of the Duke of Wellington. Her masts and her three upper decks were taken off, her lower-deck alone remaining, so that she was cut-down almost to the water's edge.
This warm work was repeated through the entire fleet. Never had been closer and hotter action. The fight had reached its hottest when there came a tragical event that rendered the victory at Trafalgar, glorious as it was, a loss to England. The Redoubtable, after her first broadside, had closed her lower-deck ports, lest the English should board her through them.
In those days, and for many years afterwards, the English were addicted to crowding their vessels with guns, and there can be no doubt that many, like the Mary Rose and others, were in consequence lost; especially as their lower-deck ports were often not more than three feet above the water.
His spectacular action plunged the remainder of the crew in hopeless confusion, and he himself was rescued with difficulty in a half-drowned state of collapse by the Umpire's boat. Yet for some occult reason no feat of gallantry in action would have won him such universal commendation on the Lower-deck.
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