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Besides the two giants, there were a ninety-gun ship and two seventy-fours; and the next day a French vessel of the latter class joined, making a total reinforcement of six heavy ships. To these Saumarez could oppose but five. The Hannibal he had lost. The Pompée could not be repaired in time; her people were therefore distributed among the other vessels of the squadron.
Fleury's cunctations were disgusting to the ardent mind; and here now, still more insuperable, are the British Fleets; here and a pest to him! is your Admiral Haddock, blockading Cadiz, with his Seventy-fours! "But again, on the other or Pragmatic side, there were cunctations.
And the Queen, and the Glory, each of them not much smaller; and the Gibraltar, and the Caesar, of eighty guns each. And then look at that hoop of seventy-fours.
On the 25th of July in the same year his flagship, the Queen Charlotte, 108, led a squadron of eighteen men of war, of from ten to one hundred and four guns, and including three seventy-fours, out of Portsmouth harbour.
It was not indeed until an hour afterwards that we got a sufficiently clear sight of the French fleet to make out that it consisted of one very large one-hundred-and-twenty gun ship, eleven seventy-fours, and the same number of frigates, besides smaller craft. Dick Hagger, who had been sent aloft, told me that he had counted thirty at least. "Never mind!
The attack thus became a mere rough and tumble, in which the two seventy-fours alone sustained the French side. After three quarters of an hour, Suffren, seeing that the attempt had failed, slipped his cable and put to sea. The Annibal followed, but she had been so damaged that all her masts went overboard; fortunately, not until her head was pointed out of the harbour.
One of the former was to mount 130 guns, and several old small-class seventy-fours were cut-down and converted into the most formidable frigates that had hitherto been seen. Such was the French navy, with which the fleet of England was about to contend, not only for the dominion of the seas, but to protect the hearths and homes of the people from foreign invasion.
"The officers," says one account, "took off their shoes, and the crew all appeared with their legs bared." "Going and coming," says Washington in his diary, "I was saluted by the two frigates which lay near the wharves, and by the seventy-fours after I had been on board of them. I was also saluted, going and coming, by the fort on Castle island."
A thing incredible is about to be related; but a thing may be incredible and still be true; sometimes it is incredible because it is true. And many infidels but disbelieve the least incredible things; and many bigots reject the most obvious. But let us hold fast to all we have; and stop all leaks in our faith; lest an opening, but of a hand's breadth, should sink our seventy-fours.
"I am sure you will deserve success. To mortals is not given the power of commanding it." On the 15th Nelson sailed, having under his command three seventy-fours, a fifty-gun ship, three frigates, and a cutter. Towards sundown of the 20th the Peak of Teneriffe was sighted, distant fifty or sixty miles.
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