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Updated: May 13, 2025
Brief and cursory as is the notice of this action of the "Agamemnon" in Hotham's despatches, he mentions no other ship-of-the-line as engaged at this time, and states that she and the frigate were so far detached from the fleet, that they were finally obliged to retire on account of other enemy's vessels approaching.
Proceeding no farther in this direction, we look directly across the road, to where the barn stands, like the hull of a great black ship-of-the-line, with its port-holes opened threateningly upon the fort opposite, out of one of which a horse has thrust his head for the possible purpose of examining the strength of the works.
"The time of my being left out here by Lord Hood," which he had so much regretted, "I may call well spent; had I been absent, how mortified should I now be. What has happened may never happen to any one again, that only one ship-of-the-line out of fourteen should get into action with the French fleet for so long a time as two hours and a half, and with such a ship as the Ça Ira."
He deprived himself on the eve of battle of a first-rate ship, taking only the precaution of sending his entire correspondence with Calder, public and private, to explain his course, though scarcely to justify it. The significance of this act is enhanced by the known importance which he himself attached to the presence or absence of even a third-rate ship-of-the-line.
Our squadrons, till long after I entered the navy, were simply aggregations of vessels, no two of which were necessarily of the same size or class. When a ship-of-the-line went to sea which never happened in my time she went without mates, a palpable paradox; a ship-of-the-line, which to no line belonged.
They differed indeed only in degree from the ship-of-the-line, being all cramped two-deckers of 44 and 40 guns, and they must be regarded, in so far as they expressed any logical idea of naval warfare, as the forerunners of the "Intermediate" class, represented in the succeeding epochs by 50-gun ships, and in our own time by armoured cruisers.
An English ship-of-the-line arrived at Jamaica with orders to bring home the governor to answer for the protection he had given "these bloodthirsty and plundering rascals," while the governor who succeeded him issued the severest orders against any future operations of the freebooters.
As we approached it we saw the ship-of-the-line still following us, while the two frigates and corvette stood away round the west side. Their object was very clear. They hoped thereby to cut us off. "We may still disappoint them," I heard Mr Schank observe. "I trust so," said the Captain; but though he kept up his confidence, his countenance was very grave.
"On looking round," he says at ten o'clock, when about to begin the action, "I saw no ship-of-the-line within several miles to support me; the Captain was the nearest on our lee-quarter."
The conclusion of peace put an end to the proposed cruise of the Spark, and Farragut was next ordered, in March, 1815, to the Independence, a seventy-four-gun ship, or ship-of-the-line, as such were commonly called. She was the flag-ship of a numerous squadron, composed mostly of small vessels, destined to act against Algiers, with whom war had recently been declared.
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