Champions of the fleet

These tales of the navy of the fighting days of old are to some extent, it may seem, cruises in rather out-of-the-way waters. At the same time, they may claim present-day associ...

The _Dreadnought’s_ gun-ports should open some four feet clear of the water. People have not forgotten the horror of the _Mary Rose_; what happened to her; how she came to go do...

Once more the _Dreadnought_ followed the fortunes of Drake’s flag to battle; again, too, as Captain Fenner’s ship. In the year after the Armada she had her part in escorting the...

These are some of the “points”—some of the leading features—of this grim _mastodonte de mer_ of ours, His Majesty’s battleship, the _Dreadnought_. With her coal, ammunition, and...

It was a Man of Kent who, as admiral in chief command, planned and gave the order for the capture of Gibraltar. It was another Man of Kent who, as admiral second in command, car...

This year, 1907, has witnessed the coming round of the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of British rule in India. It has recalled to memory too, among some...

Completely taken by surprise and scared out of their wits the garrison bolted _en masse_, and Budge-Budge was ours. It was found to mount in all eighteen guns, mostly 24-pounder...

Chandernagore in itself seemed capable of making a good defence, and the Governor, indeed, as his arrangements drew towards completion, was not without hope of being able to hol...

Chandernagore, of course, is nowadays a French possession, a tiny territory of three and a half square miles, with a railway station on the line to Calcutta, where very few peop...

How the British Navy came by its first _Formidable_ man-of-war, the predecessor in the direct line of the fine first-class battleship, the _Formidable_ of our modern Navy, is on...

A British officer who went on board the _Formidable_ on the morning after the battle, wrote down a description of the scene that met his eyes there. “A lieutenant and 80 men,” h...

England, in 1758, had not yet recovered from her last bad fit of nerves, brought on by truculent vapourings from Versailles at the outset of the Seven Years’ War. Government was...

To safeguard the _Victory_, the pride of Chatham, “the finest man-of-war ever built for the Royal Navy,” as they already spoke of her, a cocked-hatted, high-gaitered marine sent...

The British Admiral lost no time over his preparations. He had made up his mind what to do within an hour of receiving the news of the fall of Brimstone Hill. And then he acted...

At Trafalgar “Nelson’s Hardy,” Captain Thomas Masterman Hardy, was captain of the _Victory_. He was not the “Captain of the Fleet,” that post being officially vacant during Capt...

J. G. Peake 1st lieutenant, R.M. George A. Westphal Midshipman Richard Bulkeley Do. John Geoghegan Clerk to agent victualler Josiah McPherson L.M. Thomas Graham Ordinary Thomas...

“The _Santa Anna_,” to quote Mr. Newnham Collingwood, “struck at half-past two o’clock, about the time when the news of Lord Nelson’s wound was communicated to Admiral Collingwo...

At Trafalgar the _Britannia_ went into action as the fifth or sixth ship astern of the _Victory_. She had three of the enemy’s ships firing on her as she ranged forward into the...

[4] The Kent Trophy Challenge Shield, of which an illustration is given, is of silver. In the centre chief point appears a representation of H.M.S. _Kent_, taken from a drawing...

Ships— _Achates_, 6 _Achille_ (Fr.), 274, 276, 280 _Aid_ or _Ayde_, 3 _Aigle_ (Fr.), 282 _Alfred_, 194, 198 _America_, 136, 138 _Arethusa_, 66 _Ark Royal_, 24, 25, 26 _Augusta_,...