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Updated: June 27, 2025
Even granting him to have hesitated from perplexity, to have lingered from vexation, to have failed through error of judgment, he will probably find favour with the candid and humane part of his fellow-subjects, when they reflect upon the nature of his situation, placed at the head of such a body of cavalry, uninstructed and uninformed of plan or circumstance, divided from the rest of the army, unacquainted with the operations of the day, chagrined with doubt and disappointment, and perplexed by contradictory orders, neither of which he could execute without offering violence to his own judgment; when they consider the endeavours he used to manifest his obedience; the last distinct order which he in person received and executed; that mankind are liable to mistakes; that the cavalry were not originally intended to act, as appears in the account of the battle published at the Hague, by the authority of prince Ferdinand, expressly declaring that the cavalry on the right did not act, because it was destined to sustain the infantry in a third line; that if it had really been designed for action, it ought either to have been posted in another place, or permitted to advance straight forwards by the windmill, according to the idea of its commander; finally, when they recall to view the general confusion that seems to have prevailed through the manouvres of that morning, and remember some particulars of the action; that the brigades of British artillery had no orders until they applied to lord George Sackville, who directed them to the spot where they acquitted themselves with so much honour and effect, in contributing to the success of the day; that the glory and advantage acquired by the few brigades of infantry, who may be said to have defeated the whole French army, was in no respect owing to any general or particular orders or instructions, but entirely flowing from the native valour of the troops, and the spirited conduct of their immediate commanders; and that a great number of officers in the allied army, even of those who remained on the open heath, never saw the face of the enemy, or saw them at such a distance that they could not distinguish more than the hats and the arms of the British regiments with which they were engaged.
A few minutes more, and the foremast passed through the same metamorphose, leaving the "Sea Witch" a three-masted schooner, with fore and aft sails on every mast and every stay. All this had been accomplished with a celerity that showed the crew to be no strangers to the manouvres through which they had just passed, each man requiring to work with marked intelligence.
Ryder called these manouvres "business"; the world called them brigandage. But the Colossus prospered and slowly built up the foundations of the extraordinary fortune which is the talk and the wonder of the world today.
Now it was that an observer not conversant with the "Sea Witch," and looking at her from a distance, would have naturally concluded that she was most appropriately named, for how else could her singular manouvres and the result that followed be explained?
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