The British battle fleet, Vol. 1 (of 2)

TO THOSE WHO IN ALL AGES BUILT THE SHIPS OF THE BRITISH NAVY AND TO THE UNKNOWN MEN WHO HAVE WORKED THOSE SHIPS AND SO MADE POSSIBLE THE FAME OF MANY ADMIRALS.

Not until the reign of Henry II was any appreciable attention paid to nautical matters. Larger ships than heretofore were built, as we assume from records of the loss of one all...

To a certain extent the galleon was to the fleets of the Mid-Fourteenth Century much what the ironclad was to the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century, or “Dreadnoughts” at th...

“This English General is a cousin of John Hawkins; he is the same who, about five years ago, took the port of Nombre de Dios; he is called Francis Drake; a man of some five and...

“I say, then, if a vanguard be ordained of those hoyes, who will easily recover the wind of any other sort of ships, with a battle of 400 other warlike ships, and a rear of thir...

The allied fleet, under the command of the Duke of York, consisted of sixty-five English and thirty-six French warships, twenty-two fire ships, and a number of small craft. This...

The French, meanwhile, either ignorant of the state of affairs, or else from general incompetence, made no attack at the time, and it was not till the 13th that battle was joine...

Officering the fleet was a less easy matter. The choice lay between retired officers more or less rusty, and the best of the “prime seamen,” who had been afloat in such warships...

==================+==========+=========+========+========== Description of | Great | | | Vessels. | Britain. | France. | Spain. | Holland. ------------------+----------+--------...

There is reason to believe that Parker was in touch with the Revolutionists in France and the dissatisfied Irish, but the bulk of the mutineers were altogether uninfluenced by p...

FRENCH. DUTCH. SPANISH. TOTAL. Ships of the line 45 25 11 81 Fifties 2 1 0 3 Frigates 133 31 20 184 Sloops, etc. 161 32 55 248 --- TOTAL 516 ---

The object of the expedition was to destroy all ships there and demolish the dockyard and fortifications. But, owing to delays, the French had ample warning of the impending att...

On the side of the authorities it has to be remembered that had any man been allowed ashore he would certainly never have been seen again, at any rate, so long as he had any mon...

The importance of deciding whether warships should be built of iron or wood was accentuated by the necessity of replacing those heavy warships which had been converted to auxili...

“In considering, then, what perfect seamanship really is, we must first adopt a correct standard by which to estimate it. The English sailor has been so long assumed as the perf...

“But we cannot turn even from this very brief consideration of the improvements in modern cannon without offering a few observations relative to an invention of a different kind...

“The _Warrior_ and the earlier ironclads are constructed with deep frames, or girders, running in a longitudinal direction through the greater part of the length of the ship, co...

From this it appears that about midnight the ship was under her topsails, double reefed. She had steam up, but was not using her screw. The ship gave a heavy lurch, righted hers...

“It is a weakness with the officers and men of any of Her Majesty’s ships to ‘crack up’ the vessels to which they belong, and it is rarely that a bluejacket growls openly agains...

=FLARE.=--The over-hang of the upper part of a ship’s sides beneath the forecastle. The peculiar outward and upward curve in the form of a vessel’s bow. When it hangs over she i...

[37] Admiral Mahan (_Influence of Sea Power upon History_) has quoted at length (p. 380) from French authorities to show that only the action of the captain of the _Destin_ (74)...

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