Bataille du Cap Henry du 16 mars 1781

Source: Kerguelen Y. J., Relation des des évènements des guerres maritimes  entre la France et l'Angleterre depuis  1778 jusqu'en 1796, an IV de la République, Paris, Imprimerie de Patris, 1796, p170-174.

 Source: A. T. Mahan, Major Operations of the Royal Navy 1762-1783, 1898

Source: Allen J., Battles of the British Navy,  London,  Henry G. Bohn, 1852, Vol 1, p 310-311

Intrepide

Commandant Louis Infernet.
 

Vaisseau de 2^e rang de 74 canons, Construit à Ferrol, lancé sous le nom d’Intrepido  et vendu à la France en 1800.

► Le 21 Octobre 1805, il  est l’un des navires du Vice Amiral Pierre Dumanoir le Pelley, à l’avant-garde avec le Formidable, Scipion, Duguay-Trouin, Mont-Blanc, et Neptune. Dumanoir ne répond pas immédiatement aux ordres de Villeneuve de revenir au combat. Quand il fait demi-tour, c’est pour se retirer après n’avoir échangé que quelques tirs avec l’ennemi.

► Infernet qui commande l’Intrépide, a prit son parti, et est sorti de la ligne en virant sur bâbord. Le "Neptuno" commandé par Valdes l'imite sans hésiter. Les deux vaisseaux courent sus ensemble au milieu des navires ennemis. L’Ajax et l’Agamemnon à l’arrière de la colonne anglaise se placent aussitôt entre l’Intrépide et la colonne de Dumanoir pour empêcher toute tentative de secours. Arrivés les derniers sur le champ de bataille ils eurent par conséquent à combattre tous les vaisseaux ennemis qui se trouvaient au centre, à la réserve du Victory et du Téméraire encore abordés alors avec le Redoutable et le Fougueux. Le capitaine Valdès du Neptuno déploya dans cette lutte inégale des talents et un courage dignes d'éloges, mais accablé par le nombre son vaisseau dut succomber.  

►l’Intrépide fond sur le Léviathan qui vient juste d'obtenir la reddition du San Augustin . Ils échangent des bordées jusqu'à ce que l’Intrépide vire pour affronter l’Africa qui s‘approche rapidement. Il est  3 h. 20 P.M.
► Face à l'Intrepide, l’Africa est rapidement désemparée et n’évite la reddition que grâce à l’Orion qui vire alors sous la poupe du navire français et vient se placer sur son avant, entre lui et l’Africa, et maintient une si puissante et précise canonnade que en moins d’un quart d’heure le grand mat et le mat d’artimon de l’Intrépide déjà maltraités par l’Africa, tombent par dessus bord. L’approche de l’Ajax et de l’Agamemnon ne laissent à l’Intrépide d’autre alternative que d’abaisser ses couleurs. C’est ce qu’il fait à 5 P.M., ayant été fortement endommagé et ayant subi des pertes, évaluées d’après ses officiers à près de 200 tués ou blessés.

►L’Intrépide est sabordé plus tard sur les ordres de Collingwood pour éviter une recapture lors de la contre attaque par les six navires du Capitaine Julien Cosmao.

►Infernet, conduit en Angleterre et bientôt échangé,  fut avec le capitaine Lucas présenté à l’Empereur à Saint-Cloud. « Si tous mes vaisseaux, leur dit-il, s’étaient conduits comme ceux que vous commandiez, la victoire n’aurait pas été incertaine.  »

So long as that species of ordnance, called gun by the English and canon by the French, continued in exclusive possession of the decks of a fighting ship, no difference existed between the number of carriage pieces she actually mounted, and the number which stood as the sign of her class in the published lists. In the process of time, however, the nominal, or rated, and the real force of a ship lost their synonymous signification; and that in a manner, and to an extent, too important, in every point of view, to be slightly passed over.

In the early part of 1779 a piece of carriage-ordnance, the invention, by all accounts, of the late scientific General Robert Melville, was cast, for the first time, at the iron-works of the Carron Company, situated on the banks of the river Carron, in Scotland. Although shorter than the navy 4-pounder, and lighter, by a trifle, than the navy 12-pounder, this gun equalled, in its cylinder, the 8-inch howitzer. Its destructive effects, when tried against timber, induced its ingenious inventor to give it the name of smasher.

As the smasher was calculated chiefly, if not wholly, for a ship-gun, the Carron Company made early application to have it employed in the British navy, but, owing to some not well explained cause, were unsuccessful. Upon the supposition that the size and weight of the smasher, particularly of its shot, would operate against its general employment as a sea-service gun, the proprietors of the foundry ordered the casting of several smaller pieces, corresponding in their calibers with the 24, 18, and 12 pounder guns in use; or rather, being of a trifle less bore, on account of the reduced windage very judiciously adopted in carronades, and which might be extended to long guns with considerable advantage. These new pieces became readily disposed of among the captains and others, employed in fitting out private armed ships to cruise against America, and were introduced, about the same time, on board a few of the frigates and smaller vessels belonging to the royal navy.

The new gun had now taken the name of Carronade, and its several varieties became distinguished, like those of the old gun, by the weight of their respective shot. This occasioned the smasher to be called, irrevocably, a 68-pounder : whereas, repeated experiments had shown, that a hollow, or cored shot, weighing 50, or even 40 lbs., would range further in the first graze, or that at which the shot first strikes the surface of the water, and the only range worth attending to in naval gunnery. The hollow shot would, also, owing to its diminished velocity in passing through a ship's side, and the consequent enlargement of the hole and increased splintering of the timbers, produce

more destructive effects than the shot in its solid form ; one of the principal objections against which was, and still continues to be, its being so cumbrous to handle.

Before half the expiration of the year in which the first carronade had been cast, a scale was drawn up by the Navy Board, and sanctioned by the Lords of the Admiralty, for arming the different rates in the service with the 18 and 12 pounder calibers. In consequence of the first, second, and third rate ships having their quarterdecks as fully supplied with guns, as there was room for ports on each side, no additional pieces could be placed there ; but it was found that the forecastle would generally admit the opening of a pair of extra ports, and that the poop, which for nearly a century past had served chiefly as a roof to the captain's cabin, would, if timbered up on each side, afford space for three pairs of ports ; making, in the whole, eight additional ports for the reception of carronades. The 50-gun ship was found to have room for a pair of additional ports on her quarterdeck, besides a pair on her forecastle, and three pairs on her poop, when the latter was barricaded ; making altogether 10 ports. The 44-gun ship had no poop, and no armament on the quarterdeck : * by furnishing the latter with a barricade, and cutting through it four pairs of ports, besides an extra pair on the forecastle, this ship might mount the same additional number of pieces as the 50. The three remaining classes of the fifth, and the first two classes of the sixth rate, would also admit of additional ports being ; cut through the sides of their forecastles and quarterdecks. The third class of the sixth rate, and the quarter-decked ship-sloop class, being, in respect to their quarterdecks and forecastles, in a similar state to the 44, would require to be similarly built up, before they could mount the eight carronades assigned to them. †

Several captains complained of the carronade; some of its upsetting after being heated by successive discharges ; others, that, owing to its shortness, its fire scarcely passed clear of the ship's side, and that its range was too confined to be useful. The captains of some of the 32-gun frigates, in particular, represented that one pair of their quarterdeck carronades was so much in the way of the rigging, as to endanger the laniards of the shrouds, and begged to have their established number reduced from six to four. As the principal objection to carronades appeared to have arisen from defects in the manner of mounting them, some additional instructions on that head were prepared and forwarded by Mr. Gascoigne, the chief proprietor of the Carron-foundry. Some alterations were also made in the piece

* This refers to the latest establishment, or that of 1762 ; wherein two of the quarterdeck sixes are shifted to the forecastle, and the remaining two removed entirely, to admit two additional 9-pounders on the main deck.

† The following is a copy of the document in question, with an additional column, showing to what amount the total of the carriage-guns of the different classes became augmented.

[Note by transcriber: I've re-arranged the footnotes for pages 34 and 35 - where they previously carried over from page 34 to page 35, they are now all on page 34]

itself. * Still the Board of Ordnance, in repeated conferences with the Navy Board, maintained the superiority of the old gun, resting their arguments, chiefly, on the comparative length of its range ; while the Navy Board urged, that a vessel, able to carry 4-pounders of the common construction, might, with equal case, bear 18-pounders of the new; that the latter gun was worked with fewer men; that its shot was far more formidable and destructive ; and that its range was quite sufficient for the purpose required. The commissioners adduced, as one instance, the case of the Flora frigate, whose boatswain, assisted only by a boy, made a surprising number of discharges from a forecastle 18-pounder, and caused great havoc and destruction onboard the French frigate Nymphe, ultimately their prize.

Let us be permitted to remark that, with one single unimportant exception, the action between the British 36-gun frigate Flora and the French 32-gun frigate Nymphe is the first, in which the mounted force of the combatants, as compared together in all the British accounts, was mistated ; and that simply because it is, with the exception above alluded to, the first action in which a British ship of war, mounting carronades, was engaged. It was a long contest, and a sanguinary one, on the part of the Nymphe at least. Out of her complement of 291, the latter lost 136, the Flora, whose number of men on board was 259, but 36, in killed and wounded.

Captain William Peere Williams, having, in his official letter,

* One appears to have been, the adding of two calibers to its length.

stated that the Nymphe "mounted 32 guns, but was pierced for 40," says, in a postscript, " The Flora mounted 36 guns," and, he might have added, '° was pierced for 44." According to the establishment of 1779, the Flora was entitled to mount four 18-pounder carronades on her quarterdeck and four on her forecastle, making her total of carriage-guns 44. That she did mount, and successfully use, one of a pair, at least, of carronades on her forecastle, appears by the Navy Board's report; and that she also mounted four carronades on her quarterdeck, we shall establish by a document which we shall presently lay before the reader. Hence, the Flora mounted, not "36 guns," but 42, at the least. The French accounts say 44; thus: "Le 10 Août, la frégate Française la Nymphe, de 32 canons, fut prise, après un combat opiniâtre, par la frégate la Flore, de 44 canons." * The following maybe stated as the real mounted force of the two ships:

Although pierced for, and mounting, the most guns, the Flora was the shorter vessel by six feet.

According to an official list, dated on the 9th of January, 1781, † there were then 429 ships in the navy mounting carronades ; among which the 32-pounder carronade appears, and was the first of that caliber which had been used. The total of the carronades employed were 604; namely, eight 32-pounders, four 24-pounders, three hundred and six 18-pounders, and two hundred and eighty-six 12-pounders. In December of this year a recommendation to use 68-pounder carronades on the forecastle of large ships, and 42 and 32 pounders on the same deck of some of the smaller rates, induced the Navy Board to order the old Rainbow 44 to be fitted, by way of experiment, wholly with carronades of the largest description. Sir John Dalrymple proposed the casting of some that should carry a ball of 100 or 130 lbs. weight; but the board resolved to confine themselves to the heaviest of the pieces already cast, the 68-pounder.

The necessary carronades were ordered from the foundry, and some of the foremen belonging to the works attended, to see them properly fitted : it was not, however, until February or March, 1782, that the Rainbow could be completed in her equipment. What additional force she acquired by this change in her armament, the following table will show:

* Abrégé Chron. de 1'hist. de la Marine Française, 1804, p. 190.

In the beginning of April the Rainbow, thus armed, and commanded by Captain (now Admiral Sir) Henry Trollope, who, with Captain Keith Elphinstone (the late Admiral Lord Keith, and the late Rear-admiral Macbride, were among the earliest patrons of the carronade, sailed on a cruise. All the well-known skill and enterprise of her captain failed, however, to bring him within gun-shot of a foe worth contending with, until the 4th of the succeeding September; when, being off Isle de Bas, he came suddenly upon a large French frigate. Owing to the latter's peculiar bearing, one of the Rainbow's forecastle 32-pounders was first discharged at her. Several of the shot fell on board, and discovered their size. The French captain, rationally concluding that, if such large shot came from the forecastle of the enemy's ship, much larger ones would follow from her lower batteries, fired his broadside "pour 1'honneur de pavillon," and surrendered to the Rainbow. Although the capture of the Hébé had afforded no opportunity of trying the experiment contemplated by the Navy Board, and so ardently looked forward to by the officers and crew of the Rainbow, yet did the prize, in the end, prove a most valuable acquisition to the service, there being very few British frigates, even of the present day, which, in size and exterior form, are not copied from the Hébé. She measured 1063 tons, and mounted 40 guns, twenty-eight 18, and twelve 8 pounders.

In the course of 1782 a few of the larger sorts of the carronade were mounted on board some of the receiving ships, in order that the seamen of such vessels as were in port refitting might be exercised at handling and firing this, to them, novel piece of ordnance. As one proof of many, that carronades were gaining ground in the navy, the captains of the few 38 and 36 gun frigates in commission applied for and obtained 24-pounder, carronades, in lieu of the 18s with which their ships had been established. The termination of the war in January, 1783, put a stop to any further experiments with the carronade; but its merits were now too generally acknowledged, to admit a doubt of its becoming a permanent favourite: in the British navy at least, where a short range is ever the chosen distance. The removal of the swivel-stocks invariably accompanied the cutting through of carronade-portholes in the barricades of the quarter-deck and forecastle: and no one, aware of the difference in effect

between a half and a 12 pound ball, could deny that the substitution of the latter was a surprising improvement in the art of attack and defence.

The most extraordinary circumstance connected with the employment of carronades in the British navy, is that, with all their alleged advantages, they should never have been thought worthy to be ranked among the guns of the ship that carried them. Whether they equalled in caliber the heaviest of those guns, added to their number a full third, or to their power a full half (in the 14-gun sloop-class, the additional eight carronades made the numbers as 22 to 14, and the broadside weight of metal, in pounds, as 96 to 42), still they remained as mere a blank in the ship's nominal, or rated force, as the muskets in the arm-chest. On the other hand, the addition of a single pair of guns, of the old construction, to a ship's armament, removed her at once to a higher class, and gave her, how novel or inconvenient soever, a new denomination. When, for instance, in 1740, the admiralty ordered that the old 40-gun frigate should mount four 6-pounders on her quarterdeck, she became thenceforth a 44 * when also, in 1778, eight additional 6-pounders were placed upon the quarterdecks of the larger 90-gun ships, they were separated from their former companions, and promoted to a class by themselves, the 98. † When, in 1780, the Canada 74 received two additional 18-pounder long guns for her second deck, she became registered as a 76, and until the capture of the Hoche (afterwards named the Donegal), in 1798, was the only individual so registered; but when, in August, 1794, the Canada received two 68-pounder carronades for her forecastle, she still remained as a 76. In 1780 the 50-gun ship Leander received on board two 6-pounder long guns, in exchange for two 24-pounder carronades ‡ what the latter, with their quadruple claim, had not interest to procure, was granted to the former unasked; and the Leander, for upwards of 30 years, continued to be the only 52-gun ship in the navy. In 1781 the 74-gun ship Goliath received on board two 68-pounder carronades; but, as they were, not two 9-pounder " guns," she was not sent to keep company with the Canada. A dozen other instances might be adduced; but these will suffice.

So long as the word gun retains its signification, of a military engine which " forcibly discharges a ball, or other hard substance, by means of inflamed gunpowder," so long must a carronade be considered as a gun. Yet the distinction has usually been " guns and carronades;" in which sense, certainly, no ship in the British navy appears to have mounted more guns than were assigned to her by her rate. But why, when, at a subsequent day, the eight or ten "guns" upon the quarterdecks of

ships became exchanged for carronades, was not the number, of guns, as marked down in the list to denote the ship's class, reduced accordingly? What became of the gun-classification, when some of the most numerous classes in the navy mounted all carronades, except for bow-chasers ?

Among the excuses which may perhaps be offered for these seeming inconsistencies, are, that the classification of the ships was intended only as a guide for those who had the civil affairs. of the navy to manage; that the employment of carronades, although ordered generally, was, as respected the actual use of them, too partial and fluctuating, during several years at least, to warrant the subversion of the old, or become the basis of a new system ; that the addition of carronades to a ship's armament did not add one man to her complement, nor affect, in the slightest degree, the length and diameter of her masts and yards, or the proportion of boatswain's and carpenter's stores served out to her: in short, that the old classification, as far as the Navy Board was concerned, fully answered the purpose required. If the carronade-innovation produced confusion any where, it must have been in the ordnance department, where the proportion of gunner's stores served out to a ship depends on the number and nature of her guns; and where, in truth, all the difficulties attendant upon the fitting of carronades, at their first employment, were sensibly felt.

With respect to the employment of carronades on board the armed ships of foreign powers, it may be sufficient to state, that, as far as the prize-lists are to be relied upon, no captured ship mounted any during the war which ended in 1783. Admitting, however, that carronades had begun to be used in any one foreign navy, and that they had also begun to disorganize, or render obscure, the national classification of that navy, still the English would have no reason to complain; inasmuch as, whatever might be the registered force of any contending ship of the enemy's, her actual mounted force is that alone which would appear upon the English records. Not so with the enemy; for he would at once discover that, how accurately soever his own guns stood enumerated, those of the ship he had fought with had been in part overlooked. He could, to be sure, and doubtless would, inform his countrymen what was the real number of guns opposed to him.* But, even then, one nation is left in the dark as to the true merits of the contest ; while the other, attributing the discrepancy in .the accounts to design rather than to accident finds its animosity heightened to a pitch of rancour, as afflicting to humanity, as it is repugnant to honourable warfare. So limited, however, had been the use, and, except in the Rainbow's case, so light the calibers, of the carronade, during the short period that intervened between its first employment in

the British navy and the termination of hostilities with France, in 1783, that few if any of the published accounts require, on that account, to be recanvassed or disturbed. How the case became altered in the succeeding war will be discovered, as the events of that war pass in order of detail.

There is another point in the armament of ships, requiring at present to be briefly noticed. Few persons but must know, that the destruction caused by discharges of cannon is, in a great degree, proportionate to the diameter and weight of the shot. Were it not for this, no ship's deck would be encumbered with guns, weighing each 56 hundred weight, when a tier that weighed one hundred weight each would answer as well. "Il est certain," says M. Duhamel, "que ce sont toujours les gros canons qui sont les plus avantageux dans un combat, et ainsi il est préferable de mettre sur un vaisseau un petit nombre de gros canons qu'un plus grand nombre de petits."* Nor, would the expense of fitting the Rainbow with 68-pounders have been incurred, when the same end could have been attained by arming her with 12-pounders. Carronades of the latter caliber were already in the arsenal at Woolwich, with their slides and carriages, ready to be placed on board: while those of the former caliber had to be cast at the foundry in Scotland; thence transmitted to Woolwich to be proved ; thence to the port at which the ship was fitting ; and, when there, were to be (an arduous task it was) properly and securely mounted. A 3 and a 32 pounder are equally guns; but he that would match them, because they are guns, might with the same propriety, pit a man of three, † against a man of six feet in height, simply because they are men. From this difficulty, attendant more or less, upon all sea-fights, land-fights are wholly exempt. Every foot-soldier, in either army, enters the field with a musket on his soldier; every cavalry-man wields either a pike or a broadsword, and is mounted on an animal of the same species and comparative strength, and every piece of artillery employed is within a trifle of the same caliber. Fix the number of each army, and mark the nature of the ground; and what more is generally required for coming to a conclusion on the relative strength of the combatants ?

On the other hand, compare the account of the opposed forces in the case of the Rainbow and Hébé as extracted from the work of an English naval chronologist, with the true state of the case, as exhibited in a preceding page. " On the 4th of September," says Schomberg, "Captain Trollope, in the Rainbow of 44 guns, fell in with, and captured off the isle of Bas, la Hébé French frigate, of 40 guns, and 360 men, commanded by

M. de Vigney, who was slightly wounded; her second captain and four men were killed, and several wounded, The Rainbow had one man killed. * Not another word is there on the subject. Who, then, with this account before him, but must censure Monsieur de Vigney for having submitted so tamely, as well as praise Captain Trollope for having conquered an enemy's ship so nearly his equal? Exhibit the nature, as well as number- of the guns on each side, and an end is put to the delusion.

The several denominations, by which English guns in either service are identified with their respective calibers, are not applicable to foreign guns, every nation possessing besides a scale of calibers, or natures, a standard of weights and measures, peculiar to itself. Until, therefore, the calibers, or pounders; of the several sea-service guns, in use by the different powers at war, can be reduced into English weight, it will be in vain to attempt any comparison between them. For instance, the gun with which the French arm the lower decks of their line-of-battle ships, above a 64 (a class that, with them, has long since been extinct), they denominate a 36-pounder; for the plain reason, that the shot suitable to its cylinder, and which shot measures in diameter 6.239 French inches and decimal parts, is assumed to weigh 36 French pounds. But the same shot measures 6.648 English inches and decimal parts, and weighs very little less than 39 English pounds. The following table, which has been drawn up with great care, is submitted as the only statement of the kind in print.

* Schomberg's Nav. Chron. vol. ii., p. 75.

† This as well as the rest, is founded on a calculation ; but practical experience has shown, that French shots usually weigh an ounce or two more than is here assigned to them. It appears, indeed, that the French 36-pound shot weigh nearly 37 pounds French. See "Voyages dans la Grand Bretagne par Charles Dupin, Force Navale," tome ii., p. 119. Admitting that the shots of the lesser French calibers are also exceeded in their real weights in the same proportion, the usual English weight assigned to the French shots, namely, 40 lb. for the 36, 28 lb. for the 24, 20 lb. for the 18, 14 for the 12, and 91b for the 11 pounder, are perhaps more correct than the weight specified in the above table. According to M. Dupin (Force Navale, tome ii., p. 97) the following are the weights of English shot in French pounds and decimals

Another French writer says, "le boulet de 6 Anglaise pèse un peu plus de cinq livres et demie, poids de marc."

‡ That highly useful little work, " The Bombardier, and Pocket Gunner," gives the Spaniards, instead of this gun, a 9-pounder, but in their own nomenclature, it is invariably, as far as our discoveries have reached, an 8-pounder.

Nothing can demonstrate the utility of such a table more clearly, than the material difference observable between some of the calibers : the Danish 36-pound shot, for instance, weighs nearly two pounds more than the Russian 42 ; yet, nominally, the latter is the heavier by one seventh. As it is for the gross, or broadside, and not for the individual caliber, that our calculations are chiefly wanted, that integral proportion, which comes nearest to the difference expressed in the table, will answer the purpose. Thus:

There is frequently between two ships a disparity of size, as denoted by the tonnage, not easily reconcilable with the number of guns mounted by each. Numerous instances might be adduced, but a few will suffice. The Rainbow measured 831 tons, and mounted 48 guns; while the Hébé measured 1063 tons, and mounted but 40 guns. Again, the old Blenheim measured 1827 tons, and mounted 98 guns; while the Triumph, built three years afterwards, measured 1825 tons, and mounted only 74 guns. In both pairs of cases, the disagreement of the force with the tonnage arises from the latter not being affected by the upper, or top-side construction of the ship. Had the Rainbow been built, as to her battery-decks, in the same manner as the Hébé she would have mounted but 28 guns; and the Blenheim, at a subsequent day, had actually one of her decks removed, and then, without suffering the slightest decrease in her tonnage, mounted the same number of guns as the Triumph. A difference in size, however, is frequently observable between ships, that agree, both in the number of their guns and in the manner of carrying them.

* According to the numbers in the table, it wants a 256th part of being so ; but this difference may surely be passed over, if not for its insignificance, as some allowance for the more important difference mentioned in note † of the last page.

† All fractional parts may be given up thus: 1268 divided by 12 = 105, and a fraction, but 105 (without the fraction)+1268=1373.

When it is considered that, proportionable to the size of the gun and its carriage, must be the port to which it is fitted, the space between that and the next port, and, as a necessary consequence, the whole range and extent of the deck, an increase in the principal dimensions and tonnage of the ship follows of course. Hence, one class of ship mounts twenty-six 12-pounders upon a deck 126 feet in length ; another class mounts twenty-six 18-pounders upon a deck 145 feet in length ; a third mounts twenty-six 24-pounders upon a deck 160 feet in length; and the tonnage of the several classes, estimated, upon an average, at 680, 1000, and 1370 tons, accords, very nearly, with the difference in the nature of the guns mounted by each.

When, therefore, two fighting ships, numerically equal in guns and decks, but differing greatly in tonnage, meet at sea, the inference is, that the larger ship mounts the heavier metal. Moreover, as the more massive the gun and its carriage, the greater is the strength required to work it; so does the enlargement of the masts, yards, sails, rigging, anchors, and cables, require additional hands to manage and control them : hence, the larger ship is more numerously manned, and, on coming to close quarters, can present the most formidable show of boarders. Several other advantages attend the larger ship; among which may be reckoned, her less liability, owing to her increased stoutness, to suffer from an enemy's guns, and the greater precision with which, owing to her increased stability, she can point her own.

The French and Spanish builders have certainly proceeded upon a more enlarged scale of dimensions than the builders of England ; and the ports of their ships are, therefore, both wider and farther apart than the ports of those English ships which mount the same, or nearly the same, nature of guns. This, besides conferring many of the advantages already noticed, affords a greater space between and behind the guns, and so raises their line of fire, that they can act without risk from a troubled sea; an advantage, the want of which has often been felt by the old English two and three deckers.

A comparison of that class in the two rival navies, out of which, from the number of its individuals, the line of battle is chiefly composed, will show the different ideas that prevailed in England and in France respecting the proportion that ought to exist between the armament and the size of a ship. The following is the result of a careful examination, and refers, in point of time, to the latter end of the year 1792, or just as the war with England was about to commence.

Moreover, the smallest British 74 carried 32-pounders on the lower deck, while the smallest French 74, although upwards of 100 tons larger, carried only 24s. It is true that a French 24-pounder weighs a few pounds more than an English gun of the same nominal caliber; but that overplus is amply compensated by the difference in size between the two ships.

The gradual swell of the current of architectural improvement has, however, given increased size and buoyancy to the English modern-built ships of every class ; many of which equal in dimensions and form, and surpass in strength and finish, the ships of any other power on the globe.* Still, those national navies, which, owing to frequent discomfitures, have been the oftenest renewed, are, in this respect, the most uniform; while that single navy, which has remained for ages unimpaired by defeats, and which has usually added to itself what the others have lost, exhibits in many of its classes the utmost variety of size. Its reduced scale of complements, ever its well-known characteristic, is owing, partly to the contracted size of its ships, and partly to a principle of pure native growth, a reliance upon the physical, rather than upon the numerical, strength of its seamen,

* It is but justice in regard to America, to mention that England has benefited by her example, and that the large classes of frigates now employed in the British service are modelled after those of the United States.-Editor.

On the 20th of April, 1792, that party in France, the self-constituted National Convention, in whose hands were the person of the king and the reins of the government, declared war against the Emperor of Austria, as King of Hungary and Bohemia. This was the first war (although from the situation of Austria not a naval one) in which France had been engaged since the peace of Amiens. Maritime hostility, however, if such it can be called, soon broke out, the National Convention, on the 16th of September, declaring war against the King of Sardinia,. Ten days afterwards a French army entered the territory of Savoy, and a French squadron of nine sail of the line, commanded by Rear-Admiral Laurent-Jean-François Truguet (a young officer just promoted to that rank by the republican minister of marine, Bertrand), and having on board a strong body of troops, took possession of Nice, Montalban, Villa-Franca, and finally, after a destructive cannonade, and an assault by storm, with all its horrid military consequences, of the port of Oneglia.

On the 1st of October, according to an official return, the navy of France amounted to 246 vessels; of which 86, including 27 in commission, and 13 building and nearly ready, were of the line. The squadrons were designated according to the ports in which they had been built, or were laid up in ordinary; and, of the above 86 line-of-battle ships, 39 were at Brest, 10 at Lorient (afterwards united in designation with those at Brest), 13, including the only 64 in the French navy, at Rochefort, and 24, including a strong reinforcement recently arrived from the Biscayan ports, at Toulon. Of frigates at the different ports, there were 78, 18 of them mounting 18-pounders on the main deck, and none of them less than 12-pounders. Those, resembling in size and force the British 28-gun frigates, classed as 24-gun corvettes. *