THE NAMES OF MEN-OF-WAR.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5396, 13 July 1878, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE NAMES OF MEN-OF-WAR.

(From the Saturday Review.)

In a recent article we gave an account of the line-of-batfcle ships engaged in the action of the Ist June, 1794, at the battle of the Nile, at Copenhagen, and Trafalgar, which are now represented in the navy by vessels bearing the same names. Want of space prevented us at the time from speaking of smaller ships, and we now propose briefly to describe some of the memorable frigate actions of the old war, which' are recalled by names at present belonging to men-of-war either actually in commission or fit for service. Vessels which appear on the Navy List as good for harbor work only will not be taken intp accountand, as need hardly be said, no attempt will bo made to give a complete or anything like a complete list of the still surviving names which are associated with, the combats of the great war against France, it being impossible withxnour limits to speak of any but a the most remarkable actions.

A very striking one, which occurred at no long period after hostilities had begun, is re- . called by the Nympho, a screw corvette of nine guns, which is, or was a short time ago, on* the Australian station. On June 13th, 1793, the English 12-pounder 36-gun frigate Nymphe, commanded *by the famous captain who afterwards became Lord Exmouth, sighted near the Start the Preach frigate Oleopatre, of about equal strength. Tiie English ship immediately made sail after the other, which dt first apparently attempted to get away, but after , a while shortened . sail aud awaited the coming of the Nymphe. As she approached the men onboard her cheered, and the French captain harangued his crew, waving a cap of liberty, which was afterwards fastened to the main truck. Despite this Republican manifestation, ‘however, the combat •was commenced .with an elaborate courtesy worthy of the days of chivalry. Both'captains remained uncovered until the vessels were very near each other, when Captain Pellew, seeing that the foremost guns of the Nymphe bore on the starboard quarter of the Cleopatre, put on his hat as a signal that the action was to commence, and, formalities being over, the morning's work began. Very sharp and short it was.* The two frigates' running before the wind, exchanged a furious cannonade, until the Cleopatre, having lost her mizzenmast and her wheel, came round with her bow to the Nymphe’s broadside and rau into her. Captain Pellew at first thought that the French crew were about to board, aud ordered his men to .repel boarders; bu f , promptly seeing that the enemy was in no condition to attack, he told his own sailors to. board.the other vessel, which they did, capturing her immediately. The whole engagement, though there was considerable loss on both sides, took a wonderfully ahorf space of time compared with that of most frigate actions, and was described with admirable terseness aud simplicity by Captain Pellew to his brother. “We dished her up,” said the captain of the Nymphe, “in fifty minutes.”. The French commander was killed in this engagement, and showed in his last moments a heroism not to be surpassed. Horribly mangled by a round shot, he drew from his pocket what he imagined to be a list of secret signals which he had in his possession, and died biting it to pieces. It seems painful to add that the unfortunate man was mistaken, and that he destroyed, not the list, but his commission, which he took out by mistake. The next memorable fight in which a vessel now represented in the navy did battle was that of the Blanche and Pique. The former, a 12-pounder 32-gun frigate, was cruising* off Graude-Terre, Guadeloupe, in the beginning of January, 1795 ; and, on the 4th of that month succeeded, with some little difficulty, in tempting the French frigate Pique, of a strength a little exceeding her own, from under ■ the shelter of batteries. The action beg in at 1 a,m. on the sth ,* and an unremitting cannonade continued for an hour and a half, at the end of which time the Pique, having lost her main and mizzen masts, ran into the Blanche’s quarter. The French crew with great gallantry attempted to board, but were repulsed, and Captain Faulkner, who commanded the English frigate, was killed while lashing the Pique’s bowsprit to the capstan of his own ship. Other hands lashed the bowsprit to the stump of the Blanche’s mainmast, and the two vessels wore thus made fast together ; ■ but the French ship got into such a position that the guns of the Blanche could-not be made to bear on her. Two of them, however, were shortly brought into play by a proceeding thoroughly characteristic of the seamen of those days, and often referred to since as a proof of their determination to succeed at all hazards. The men of the Blanche deliberately pointed two of their 12-pounders at the stern frame of their own vessel, and blew away a considerable part of it on either side so as to be able to fire into the Pique. This' singular manoeuvre was successful, aud a murderous cannonade was kept up for more than two hour.*, until at last some of the French crew cried for quarter, as well they might, when the Blanche At once' ceased firing. The loss on board the Pique in this engagement was enormous, the total number 61 killed and wounded being proportionally greater even than that bn board the Africaine in the famous fight with the Phcebe,-some-times ; spoken' of as the most sanguinary of frigate actions.* Out of a crew of 279, all told, tho Pique had 76 killed and 110 wounded, that Is to say. only one-third of the men who were on board the ship when the engagement began were alive aud uninjured at the end of it. In the case of the Blanche’s, as of the Phcebe’s action, it is curious to contrast the gentle feminine names of the ships with the tremendous havoc wrought by their guns. The present Blanche is a screw corvette of 1,755 tons, carrying twelve guns ; and in this case, as well as in that of the Nympho, it is perhaps-to be regretted that names associated with such memorable . encounters should not 'hlave been given to larger and more powerful vessels than those which now bear them. The battle between the Glatton and the French frigates fought on July 15, 1796, may perhaps be considered as scarcely falling within the same category as those which have been described, inasmuch as the Glatton, a converted East ludiaman, belonged to tho anomalous class of tho fifties, and was not considered a frigate. She however, to have been much more like a frigate than anything else, and some mention of her action can therefore hardly be omitted in dealing with the present subject. The Glatton, which carried 56 guns, those on the main deck being 08-pounder carronades, sighted,-when off the coast of Flanders, in July, 1796, four frigates, two corvettes, a brig, and a cutter, all French ; and Captain Trollope, who commanded the English ship, at once determined to attack them, trusting to the great weight of metal in his broadside. »He accordingly made sail for them, and ranging up alongside tho largest of the squadron, which ho rightly held to bo the Commodore’s ship, challenged her, with an audacity which would have been ludicrous if it had not been heroic, to surrender to an English man-of-war. The French vessel’s answer was to show her colors and the broad pennant, and the action at once began. -This lasted from a little before ten in the morning to eleven at night,' when the Glatton had completely discomfited her adversaries, all of whom had given up the fight ; but, owing to the- injured state of the English ship’s spars and rigging, she could nob pursue any one of them. were to some extent repaired during tho night, and next morning tho indomitable Glatton again sought battle with her opponents of the day before ; but they would have none of her, and bore away for Flushing, into which poit the solitary English ship drove them all. Tho present Glatton is a double screw iron-turret ship of 4912 tons, intended for ecast defence. She has armor of considerable thickness, and carries two 25-ton guns ; but, in spite of her size aud strength, it may bo doubted whether a name rendered memorable by such an action has been well bestowed, and whether it ought not to have been given to some still more powerful ship. The vessel which defeated six others, one of them larger than herself, ought surely to bo represented in our days by a first-rate.

,The present Fisgarcl cannot certainly bs spoken of as a vesselfit for service ; but, as her name still appears on the Navy List, a passing mention may be made of her predecessor’s action with the Immortality in 1793, when the latter, after a hard fight, was captured, having lost 115 men killed and wounded, and having so damaged the English ship that she had six feet of water iu her hold at the time the Other struck. The . names of the frigates which were successful in tho most remarkable actions for a'good many years after 1798 do not at present belong to effective men-of-war. In 1805 misfortune befel the successor of the Blanche, as a ship of this name, not the same as that which had fought the Pique, was taken by the French, sinking some hours after the engagement; but this capture was avenged four years later, when a third Blanche took the G-uerrihre, after an action which lasted even less time than that of the first Blanche, the French vessel being “dished up” in forty five minutes. . Many of her crew were, however, disabled by illness at the time of the fight. Of much longer duration was the night actioa fought off the island of Groix on November 10, 1808, between the Amethyst, a 36gnu frigate, commanded by Captain Michael Seymour, and the Th£tfa, a French forty. The battle commenced .at 9 p.ra., and after a furious broadside fight and some very skilful manoeuvres by the Amethyst, the French frigate closed }vlth .her, meaning to board. Captain Seymour, with the prompt observation of a sailor, saw that the other ship would strike his obliquely, and that her bows wool I bound off again so as to bring the-quarters of the two vessels together. Ho accordingly reserved his fire until this happened, and then .a terrific broadside was poured into* the Thdtis. Her defence was, however, continued for some time bub at twenty-five minutes past midnight her fire was completely silenced, and she was carried by boarding, having at the time of her capture sustained the L fearful loss of 134 killed and 102 wounded, out of a crew of 436. A second action was fought by the Amethyst only six mouths after this one, and was, like it, a night engagement. At 11.30 p.m. on April 5, 1809, the English frigate, commanded by the same captain, came up after a chase with the Niemen, a French 40, and immediately engaged her. By 3.45 a.m. the Niemen’s guns were silenced ; but before the Amethyst could take advantage of her adversary’s condition, her mainmast went, bringing down the mizzenmast with it, so that she became for the time unmanageable. Most unfortunately for Captai a Seymour/ another English frigate, the Arethuaa, came up, and on receiving a few shots from her, the Niemen surrendered, so that the Amethyst, after a hard battle, and the defeat of her antagonist, did not succeed in actually capturing her. The present Amethyst is a corvette of 1934 tons, carrying 14 gun?, which not long ago she was able to use iu the engagement with the Peruvian Huascar.

On March 12, 1809, the Topaze, a 36-gua frigate, encountered .two French frigates, the Danae and Flore, each of which exceeded her in size, and though, as was to be expected, she could not capture either of them, she so mauled them that they were glad to get away, leaving her victorious iu the fight. The Topaze is now represented by -a large vessel used for coastguard service. The Spartan, a screw corvette, of 1755 tons, carrying 9 guns, now represents a - frigate which the famous Jahleel Brenton commanded, in what was perhaps—putting aside the Glatton’s fight—the moat remarkable frigate action fought during the whole war. The day before this extraordinary engagement, which took place on May 3,1810, the Spartan, • a 38-gun frigate, aud her consort, the Success, chased almost to the Mole at Naples two ships, a brig and a cutter. Feeling convinced after this that there was no chance of the enemy’s giving battle so long as he had the Success with him, Captain Brontoa sent her away,* and on the morning of the 3rd the Spartan appeared- aloue in the bay. Murat, the King of Naple, had however determined, before the departure of the Success was known, that all the naval force at his command should be employed against the English ship 3, and early in the forenoon the French squadron, consisting of a 42-gun frigate, a corvette, a brig, a cutter, and seven gunboats, bore down on the solitary thirty* eight. It is difficult to understand how any vessel can have struggled against such overwhelming odds, but struggle the Spartan did most successfully, for she was altogether victorious. After a fight of about three hours her antagonists all took refuge iu Naples, except the brig, which was captured. The corvette had been disabled by the English frigate’s fire, and would also have been captured, had she not been towed away by the gunboats. The battle dver, the Spartan stood across .the bay with her prize, passing within some four miles of the Mole, on which Murat had stationed himself in expectation of a very different sight. Despite the bitterness of; the moment, however, so daring a leader can hardly have failed to feel something of a brave man’s admiration for extraordinary intrepidity on the part of an enemy. There is another name still preserved iu the navy which tells, of a frigate actioa more famous than that of the Spartan, though not more worthy of remembrance, for indeed no combat could be. The Shannon, au armorbelted cruiser of 5103 tons, carrying nine guns, now represents the vessel,which captured the Chesapeake ; but it would be superfluous to repeat the well-known story of the celebrated engagement in Massachusetts bay. In concluding this brief account of the achievements of some of the predecessors of ships now in the navy, it should be said that there is avessel at present afloat which figured in the war even before the time of the Victory. The Canopus, now lying in Plymouth harbor, was built at Toulon in 1796, and was one of the French fleet captured at the battle of. the Nile, being then called the Franklin. Under her present name she sailed Jong as an English man-of-war ; and now, after the lapse of eighty-two years, the timbers of the old line-of-battle ship still hold together.