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Updated: May 28, 2025
With similar initiative, as the Tonnant and Intrépide were seen to be escaping, Captain Saunders of the Yarmouth, 64, pursued them on his own motion, and was accompanied, at his suggestion, by the sixty-gun ships of Rodney and of Saumarez. A detached action of an hour followed, in which Saumarez fell.
Prominent British officers of that day claimed that a French sixty-gun ship was practically the equal of a British seventy-four. In this there may have been exaggeration; but they had good opportunity for judging, as many French ships were captured.
The fact was, that a French squadron, of one sixty-gun ship and two corvettes, had been on the look-out for the convoy, and had come in among them during the fog.
However, our fears on this head proved imaginary, and we were not exposed to the disgrace which might have been expected to have befallen us had we been necessitated to fight our sixty-gun ship with no more than thirty hands. After the Gloucester's arrival we were employed in earnest in examining and repairing our rigging.
But he faithfully reconsidered the subject, and concluded to enter the navy by voluntary enlistment, thus escaping impressment, which would be an outrage upon his manhood. He began his service on board the Eagle, a sixty-gun ship, which was soon after commanded by Captain Palliser.
The French sixty-gun ship proved to be the Leonidas; she had been sent out with two large frigates on purpose to intercept the convoy, but she had parted with her consorts in a gale of wind. Her loss of men was very great; that on board of the Portsmouth was trifling.
I shall not attempt to describe them, but content myself with observing, that the oblong basin, which is surrounded with a granite mole, is capacious enough to permit a hundred first- rates to lie conveniently in ordinary: but instead of such a force, I saw only a sixty-gun frigate and two brigs lying in this basin, and to this inconsiderable number of vessels is the present war marine of Spain reduced.
"Hullo there, commodore! what is it?" replied the tug captain. The red-faced figure glared down for a moment. "They want a tug up there at Heinzman's. Can you go?" "Sure!" cried Marsh, choking. The LUCY BELLE sheered off magnificently. "What do you think of that?" Marsh asked Orde. "The commodore always acts as if that old raft was a sixty-gun frigate," was Orde's non-committal answer.
The fact was, that a French squadron, of one sixty-gun ship and two corvettes, had been on the look-out for the convoy, and had come in among them during the fog.
They had captured and taken possession of several vessels before they were discovered, but the sixty-gun ship at last ran very near to the Portsmouth, and Alfred, who had the watch, and was on a sharp look-out, soon perceived through the looming fog, that she was not one of the convoy.
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