DEATH of a FRENCH ADMIRAL.
Admiral Count Bouet-Willaumez died at his house at Maisons Laffitte, near Paris, aged sixty-three. This officer entered the service when only fifteen years old, in 1823. His promotion was rapid, and 1844 found him a first-class captain and Governor of Senegal. In 1854 he was made a rear admiral, and with that rank held the responsible position of principal staff officer of the fleet during the Crimean wa*\ He was by the side of Admiral Hameliu on the Ville de> Paris when a shell from bebastopol killed or wounded all the officers on the quarter-deck except the admiral and himself. The Emperor made him a grand officer of the Legion of Honour a vice admiral, and, in 1860, a senator. In 1870 he was appointed to the command of the Baltic fleet; and to his dying hour he never ceased lamenting that his fleet, from which much was expected, was not able to do anything. The Empress Eugenie went to see him off from Cherbourg, and made a speech on the occasion. When the news of the revolution of Sept. 4 reached the admiral on board the flagship Surveillante, he told his officers that had he been in Paris he would have protected the Empress, revolver in hand, just as on Feb. 24, 1848, when he was only a captain, he escorted the Duchess of Orleans and the Count de Paris, sword in hand, from the Tuileries to the Chamber. The admiral probably did not know at the time that the Empress required no protection on Sept. 4, as nobody thought of preventing her from running away. An officer who was on the Surveillante in the Baltic says that Admiral Bouet-YVillaumez had made preparations to bombard Colberg the only vulnerable point that he could find on the Prussian coast; but that when he arrived within twomiles of Colberg, and found it to be a watering-place, and the beach crowded with women and children, the red cross of Geneva floating over their heads, he could not resolve to attack.
The bight of a rope is perfectly harmless.
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Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 890, 21 November 1871, Page 3
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351DEATH of a FRENCH ADMIRAL. Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 890, 21 November 1871, Page 3
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