Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 4, 2025
In addition to these tremendous defences, booms had been fixed across the mouth of the harbor, and a three-decker, three two-deckers, and two frigates sunk in a line, forming a formidable barrier against the entry of hostile ships. Besides all this, the whole of the Russian Black Sea fleet were in harbor, and prepared to take part in the defence against an attack by sea.
'This morning at four o'clock I was on deck and we passed a division of the Russian Fleet under sail, one three-decker and eight two-deckers of 80 and 74 guns, four frigates, two corvettes, and three or four brigs; the line-of-battle ships formed the line of battle on the larboard tack and bore up with us, but the wind being light they did not keep long in company.
These were the two-deckers of 56, 54, 50, 44, and even 40 guns. They had long been regarded as not 'fit to lie in a line, and they were never counted in the frigate classes.
Ships as heavy as the two-deckers moved along with groaning efforts, their bulk-heads and timbers "complaining," to use the language of the sea, as the huge masses, loaded with their iron artillery, rose and sunk on the coming and receding billows.
The experience of naval war, down to the close of that in which Trafalgar was the most impressive event, led to the virtual abandonment of ships of the line above and below a certain class. The 64-gun ships and smaller two-deckers had greatly diminished in number, and repetitions of them grew more and more rare.
So far the system of rating was sound enough, but when we come to the third rate we find it includes 80-gun ships, which were also of three decks, while the bulk of the rest were 70-gun two-deckers. The fourth rate was also composed of two-decked ships weak battle-units of 60 and 50 guns and this was far the largest class. All these four rates were classed as ships-of-the-line.
Two of the ships ahead struck me as frigates, having their broadsides exposed to us: we had raised one line of ports, but it was possible they might turn out to be two-deckers; ships of war they were, beyond all question, and I fancied them English from the squareness of their upper sails. They, too, were consorts, making signals to each other, and closing fast on opposite tacks.
What delicious walks we should have had together, my pretty Virlandaise and I, along the harbour where the two-deckers and the frigate slept peaceably by the red roofing of the warehouse, by the green banks of the strait, through the deep shades of the trees amongst which the fort is half concealed, where the guns are thrusting out their black throats between branches of alder and willow.
Whether our Government divined Napoleon's designs on India or not, it took measures to protect our interests there. In January 1804 we had on the Cape of Good Hope and the East Indies stations, both together, six sail of the line, three smaller two-deckers, six frigates, and six sloops, or twenty-one ships of war in all.
There were at that period three-deckers of sixty-four guns, and two-deckers of only thirty guns. With regard to the guns themselves, the demi-cannon was probably a 32-pounder, the cannon petro a 24-pounder, and the basilisk a 12-pounder; the whole culverin an 18-pounder, and the demi-culverin a 9-pounder; the saker a 6-pounder, and the mignon a 4-pounder.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking