Naval battles of the world : $b Great and decisive contests on the sea ... with an account of the Japan-China war and the recent battle of the Yalu; the growth, power, and management of our new Navy.Shippen, Edward
History
Naval battles of the world : $b Great and decisive contests on the sea ... with an account of the Japan-China war and the recent battle of the Yalu; the growth, power, and management of our new Navy.
Shippen, Edward
Naval battles; Sino-Japanese War, 1894-1895; United States. Navy
The following anecdote of them is said to be true. While on the passage
to Naples, in the Vanguard, they were, as usual, dining with Nelson.
One of the French captains had lost his nose, another an eye, and
another most of his teeth, by a musket ball. During the dinner, Nelson,
half blind from his wound, and not thinking what he was about, offered
the latter a case of toothpicks, and, on discovering his error, became
excessively confused, and in his confusion handed his snuff-box to the
captain on his right, _who had lost his nose_.
LEANDER AND GÉNÉREUX. 16TH AUGUST, A.D. 1798.
In connection with the Battle of the Nile, it may be interesting to
give some account of an action between single ships which closely
followed it, in which Admiral Nelson’s dispatches describing his
victory were captured by one of the two French line-of-battle ships
which escaped from Aboukir Bay.
It will be remembered that the Généreux and Guillaume Tell, with two
frigates, made sail and escaped, on August 2d.
On the 5th the Leander, 50, Captain Thompson, was despatched, with
Captain Berry, of Admiral Nelson’s flag-ship, to convey to Earl St.
Vincent the report of the great action.
The Leander, making the best of her way to the westward, was, at
daybreak on the 18th of August, within a few miles of the Goza di
Candia. As the sun rose a large sail was discovered in the south,
evidently a ship-of-the-line, and standing directly for the Leander,
which latter ship was becalmed, while the stranger was bringing up
a fine breeze from the southward. The Leander being some eighty men
short of her complement, and having on board several who were wounded
in the late action, Captain Thompson very properly took every means
to avoid a contest with a ship so superior in size and force. But the
inferiority in sailing of the Leander rendered an action inevitable;
and it was only left him to steer such a course as would enable her to
receive her powerful antagonist to the best advantage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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