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During one of them, when we were tackling a French eighty-gun ship, I got away from mother, who was with the other women in the cockpit attending to the wounded, and slipped up on deck, where before long I found father. `Here I am, I said, `come to see the fun.
This eighty-gun ship started on the night of March 29th to run out from La Valetta, to relieve the famished garrison from feeding the twelve hundred men she carried.
She was an English eighty-gun ship; the 'Blanche' they called her. Ventrebleu! I didn't know how they ever got so handsome a model; but, I learned after, she was a French ship, and built at Toulon, for you see, Comrades, they never had such craft as ours.
One observation occurred to me then, and I have thought of it ever since with redoubled conviction; this was, that the admiral, after the battle began, was no admiral at all: he could neither see nor be seen; he could take no advantage of the enemy's weak points or defend his own; his ship, the Victory, one of our finest three-deckers, was, in a manner, tied up alongside a French eighty-gun ship.
Among the actions of other brave commanders, that of the gallant Earl of Dursley, commander of the "Boyne," an eighty-gun ship, must be mentioned. He was but twenty-three years of age, yet he gave numerous instances of his undaunted courage, steady resolution, and prudent conduct. The battle ended at the close of the day, when the enemy escaped with the help of their galleys to leeward.
An interesting illustration of this trenchant clearness is to be found in instructions given to the captain of the "Donegal," an eighty-gun ship, sent under very critical circumstances to cruise off Cadiz, in September, 1803.
The day may come when I shall write down all that I remember of the greatest battle ever fought upon salt water, and how my father's gallant life was brought to an end as, with his paint rubbing against a French eighty-gun ship on one side and a Spanish seventy-four upon the other he stood eating an apple in the break of his poop.
"But what do you say to that big ship coming up Channel out there?" asked Tom. "We shall be made mincemeat of if she gets up to us, for I heard the boatswain's mate say that she's a seventy-four at least, and may be an eighty-gun ship, or still larger." "She hasn't come up with us yet," answered Bill.
For a while, indeed, he placed there an eighty-gun ship, but the gradual deterioration of his squadron and the increase of Latouche Tréville's obliged him to recall her, and at times his anxiety was great; not the less because Gore, like other frigate captains, entertained the fancy that his three frigates might contend with a ship-of-the-line.
Among Nelson's twenty-seven there were seven three-deckers, of ninety-eight to one hundred guns; but in the lower rates the British were at a disadvantage, having but one eighty-gun ship and three sixty-fours, whereas the allies had six of the former and only one of the latter.
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