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Updated: May 23, 2025
From Sandy's orders given at the approach of the squall, the reader might possibly infer that the sable mariner was commander of a ninety-gun frigate, while in point of fact he was only skipper of a very disreputable fishing-smack.
A ninety-gun ship of the line and a sloop, sent on this errand, anchored off Uraga in 1846, and their commander, Commodore Biddle, applied for the sanction of trade. He received a positive refusal, and in pursuance of his instructions to abstain from any act calculated to excite hostility or distrust, he weighed anchor and sailed away.
"As to that, Mr Rogers, when a man has been a Prime Minister, he ought to think himself fit for anything; and sooner than live on a dissolute island all me life, I'd undertake to build a ninety-gun ship, if I had the materials." The answers of the two seamen made Tom think that Desmond's proposal was, at all events, worth consideration.
It will be recognized that Calder's ninety-gun ship was no small loss. Such were the general dispositions in which the sailing of the enemy was awaited. A main body of eighteen to twenty, fifty miles west of Cadiz, a frigate squadron close in to the harbor, and two groups of ships-of-the-line extended between these extremes.
Sir Robert, however, whose situation was very painful, did not choose to delay a trial from the result of which he confidently expected a complete justification; and Nelson, instead of sending him home in a frigate, insisted on his returning in his own ninety-gun ship ill as such a ship could at that time be spared.
'To be sure, I thought, 'we shall get there just about the slack there is some little hope in that' but in the next moment I cursed myself for being so great a fool as to dream of hope at all. I knew very well that we were doomed, had we been ten times a ninety-gun ship.
Private letters from town and the newspapers are full of it, and I am morally certain it will be out soon; for one of the ninety-gun ships, commanded by an officer very near the head of the list of captains, is nominated for Sir Erasmus Gower's flag, which appears conclusive.
The two fleets were nearly equal in strength, there being eight ships on each side; but the English had one ninety-gun ship, while of the French one was only a heavy frigate, which was put into the line.
The trial of this ship has established the practicability of adapting a propeller to a ship of the largest class, so as to insure great speed, and constitute a most effective man-of-war for certain purposes and in certain situations; but when the great weight of the engines is considered, and the large space they occupy in the vessel, thereby diminishing the stowage of supplies, and further, that, after the coal is exhausted, the ninety-gun ship has but the sail of a sixty-gun ship to rely upon, it is not easy to avoid the conclusion, that, however useful such a vessel may be for short passages, and in those seas in which her supplies of coal and provisions may be constantly replenished, her sphere of action must be very limited, and she could not be relied upon for the long cruises and various services on which an ordinary line-of-battle ship is employed.
"Yes, on our own heads. Boy, never be so foolish as to trust a long shot. It makes a great smoke and some noise, but it's a terrible uncertain manner of throwing old iron about. In such a business as this, I would sooner trust Tom Coffin and his harpoon to back me, than the best broadside that ever rattled out of the three decks of a ninety-gun ship.
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