United States or Sri Lanka ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
So close were they that the middle-and lower-deck guns of the Victory had to be depressed and fired with light charges, lest their balls should pierce through the foe and injure the Temeraire.
This was a point upon which Nelson's officers knew that it was hopeless to remonstrate or reason with him; but both Blackwood, and his own captain, Hardy, represented to him how advantageous to the fleet it would be for him to keep out of action as long as possible; and he consented at last to let the LEVIATHAN and the TEMERAIRE, which were sailing abreast of the VICTORY, he ordered to pass ahead.
I perceive that he is strong and well, and I hope he will have a great deal of hunting, sans etre trop temeraire. My hearty love to Lady Caroline. Mie Mie and I have not laid aside the thoughts of that which is so connected with our wishes and affections, but I see no immediate prospect of doing or hearing anything one likes as yet.
Our helm was then put up, and we fell aboard the `Redoubtable, while the `Temeraire, Captain Blackwood, ranged up on the other side of her, and another French ship got alongside the `Temeraire. There we were all four locked together, pounding away at each other, while with our larboard guns we were engaging the `Bucentaur, and now and then getting a shot at the big Spaniard, the `Santissima Trinidade. Meantime our other ships had each picked out one or more of the enemy, and were hotly engaged with them.
The quarter-masters of the fleet were just striking six bells, or proclaiming that it was seven o'clock in the morning watch, as the Plantagenet and le Téméraire came abeam of each other. Both ships lurched heavily in the troughs of the seas, and both rolled to windward in stately majesty, and yet both slid through the brine with a momentum that resembled the imperceptible motion of a planet.
So inspiriting was the relief of passing into the clean and windy streets of Namelesston from the heavy and vapid closeness of the coffee-room of the Temeraire, that hope began to revive within us. We began to consider that perhaps the lonely traveller had taken physic, or done something injudicious to bring his complaint on.
That is what we feel about the sunrise in the picture of Ulysses and Polyphemus. Next to it in the National Gallery hangs another picture called 'Rain, Steam, and Speed' the Great Western Railway. From the realm of the mythical, this takes us back to the class of scenes of which the 'Fighting Temeraire' is one, actually beheld by Turner, but magically transfigured by his brush.
All these suffered as they closed, but far less than those near the head of the line. Of the total British casualties fully a third fell upon the four leading ships Victory, Téméraire, Royal Sovereign and Belleisle. Not until about three o'clock were the shattered but victorious British in the center threatened by the return of the ten ships in the Allied van.
Admiral Sir Henry Nicholson, who was captain of the Temeraire at the bombardment of Alexandria, and has since been commander in chief at the Cape of Good Hope and at the Nore, has spoken thus: "This war has taught us nothing. The state of the Spanish navy has been for years so hopelessly rotten that when the moment for action arrived its military value was nil.
"You know, Weatherhelm," said he, when I met him some months afterwards, "that I formed one of the prize crew sent to take possession of her. Before we got her sufficiently into order to be manageable, we fell on board the Temeraire, one of our own squadron. We little thought at that time that our beloved chief was lying in the cockpit of the Victory mortally wounded.
Word Of The Day