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Updated: June 21, 2025
Being sent with several armed boats to attack two Spanish corvettes lying in the port of Barcelona, in the year 1800, he had pulled alongside a neutral vessel, a Swede, which was standing into the harbor; and after examining her papers in the due exercise of his right as a belligerent, his boats hooked on to her, thus using a neutral to tow them into the enemy's port, so that his men reached their scene of exertion unfatigued by the oar, and for a great part of the way protected by such respect as the Spanish batteries might show to a neutral coerced into aiding a hostile undertaking.
In this case, as in the former, we should be preceded fifteen days only by corvettes; we should pass the month of April in the south, attack Rhode Island to May, and arrive at Halifax the last of June.
The French called vessels of this size corvettes, from the Italian word corvettore, to leap or bound, from which we have derived the word curvet. The French afterwards applied the name to ships of 24 guns.
But all the same we ran away." "We're English" and there was a touch of the true insular pride in her voice, but they spoke in French, and not very good French at that, and scarce a word of English had one of them at that time. "Pooh! Three little corvettes from two men-o'-war and four big frigates!
The navy at the outbreak of hostilities consisted of about seventy ships of the line, and as many frigates and large corvettes, with a hundred smaller vessels. These ships were built on admirable models, for the French marine architects were well-trained and skillful; but the materials and the construction were not equal in excellence to the design.
She is, however, inferior to us in many desirable qualities, particularly in the essential one of being able to keep the sea, and fight her guns in all weathers. The "Comus," one of our handsome steel corvettes, was also here.
Up to the present day many of the largest ships-of-war are flush-decked, as are all brigs-of-war and many corvettes, but a frigate, which must have a quarter-deck and forecastle, cannot properly be said to be flush-decked, although, in fact, the gratings or gangway at the waist give her the appearance of being so to the unsophisticated eye.
"It's not at us, sir," said Gascoigne, the midshipman; "it's at the Spanish vessel I saw the shot fall ahead of her." "It must be a privateer," said Captain Wilson; "at all events, it is very fortunate, for the corvettes would otherwise have towed into Carthagena. Another gun, round and grape, and well pointed too; she carries heavy metal, that craft: she must be a Maltese privateer."
We ran as close as we dared, and fired several broadsides into her to prevent her floating with the rising tide. The other two corvettes came back to assist their comrade, but when we sailed boldly towards them, firing our bow-guns again, the one nearest to us also deliberately ran ashore, and was, like the first, dismasted.
The two corvettes were, however, likely to prove no despicable opponents, and Captain Martin was only watching until he had knocked away the masts or spars of one or both of the frigates, to make sail and escape, for it would have been madness to have continued the fight longer than was necessary to accomplish that object.
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