A Sea Battle.

Manawatu Herald, 22 October 1896, Page 3

A Sea Battle.

The following account extracted "Deeds that won the Empire " will be read with interest on this occassion. The fight however took place in 1795 but shows the material with which the battle of Trafalgar was won. Faulknor, however, is best known to fame by the historic fight betwixt the Blanche 82 gun?, to which he had been promoted, and the Pique, a French frigate, with the same number of guns aa the Blanche, though -of heavier calibre, and a crew of 279 men, as against the Blanche's crew of 198. There was some pretty manoeuvring in the midnight darkness, each ship trying to rake its opponent, and trying in vain. It was like the thrust and parry of skilful fencers. Finally, about 2 o'clook, the ships closed frankly broadside to broadside. By clever seamanship Faulknor crept ahead of his opponent, and was in the act of luffing to port, so as to cross the bows of the Pique and rake that ship, when the porely-wounded mizzenmast of the British ship fell with a terrific crash over tbe side, and its decks became a tangle of fallen sails and cordage. The Pique moving forward thrust her bowsprit over the quarter of the dismantled Blanche, j and at once attempted to board, the immense superiority in numbers of her crew giving her every chance of success. The quarter-deck and main-dec's guns of the Blanche, however, were brought to bear on the Frenchman's bows, and not a man dare charge that' dreadful cross-fire. | It was now 3 a.m., and Faulknor, as he found the Frenchman's nose thrust over his quarter-deck, pro-, posed to fasten it there. With a cluster of seamen he wa3 busy fastening the bowsprit of the French ship with a hawser to his .own cipstan when he waß shot through the heart by a musket fire from the foretop of the Pique. The lashings at that moment broke, and the Pique began to drift astern. As its bowsprit, however, crossed the stern of the Blanche, another hawser was thrown across it, and the Pique was fastened by the nose, so to speak, to the stump of the Blanohe's mizzennaaet. The hawser allowed the Pique to swing clear astern, the sails on the Blanche's foremast filled with the freshening wind, and there was thus the astonishing spectacle of a British ship, with its captain killed, and two of its masts gone by the board, literally towing its yet unconquered antagonist astern. The Frenchmen made desperate attempts to cut the hawser by which the Blanche was towing them, but the marines of the Blanche covered the French bowaprit with a fire so quick and sure that every man who ran out upon it to cut the hawser dropped, killed or wounded, into the sea. The quarter-deck of the Blanche, however, was commanded in turn by the fire from the forecastle and tops of the Pique, so that many men were being killed on both sides, while neither ship could actually capture the other. The British had no stern-ports, and so could not bring any guns to bear upon the Pique, and the carpenters tried in vain to cut down the upper transom-beam, so as to improvise a port. They could, however, at least blow out a port 1 The two after-guns were run up against thft stern-frame, the firemen with their buckets were gathered in the cabin, and the guns were then fired dear through the stern frame, making two ragged but sufficiently serviceable ports, from which two twelve*pounders raked with deadly effect the unfortunate Frenchman. The Pique was practically helpless. She could neither cut loose from the Blanohe, nor answer her fire. But for two hours with a dogged endurance, which has never been surpassed, she sullenly sustained the raking fire of the Blanche. By 4 o'clock all her masts were over the side, only an occasional splutter of musketry answered tbe steady guns of the Blanche. But at a little after 5 a.m., just when daylight was beginning to creep over the sea, a shoot for quarter from the French* mana forecastle was heard.

The British fire at once ceased, but neither 'ship bad a boat left which could float. How was the captured ship to be taken possession of? British seanien are fertile in resource. The second lieutenant of the Blanche swung himself over its stern, and, clinging with hands and feet to the hawser, dragged himself along it to the Frenchman. Ten seamen followed him, and their weight dragged the bight, of the hawser into the sea. Lieutenant Milne, with his ten sailors, had to swim part of the way betwixt the vessels, then climb up the hawser, till blackened with smoke and dripping with sea-wattr, they Btood on the shot-torn decks of the Pique 1 The fight lasted over five hours. The Blanche lost 9 killed and 21 wounded, a total of 80 casualties ; but the killed and wounded on board the Pique numbered no fewer than 180 !