The failures of 1690 and 1691 enhanced the glory of the victory of La Hogue in 1692. On that battle there are no less than four ballads. One of them, _Admiral Russell scowering the French Fleet_, long kept its popularity with sailors, and is to be found in most eighteenth-century collections of songs. A pamphleteer, writing in 1757 about the action off Toulon on February 11, 1744, says, ‘I myself heard the song about the battle of La Hogue sung by almost every man on board one ship the day of the battle of Toulon with very good effect, till the infamous behaviour of some in the fleet put an end to their song, and changed their praises of the dead into curses of the living, and, upon inquiry, I had reason to believe it was sung in every ship in the fleet with the same effect’ (_Three Letters relating to the Navy, Gibraltar and Port-Mahon_, 1757, p. 18). Rear-Admiral Richard Carter, who was killed at La Hogue, is the subject of an elegy preserved in the British Museum. It shows that he was popular with those who served under him: ‘His virtue was not rugged, like the waves, Nor did he treat his sailors as his slaves: But courteous, easy of access, and free, His looks not tempered with severity.’ There was also published in 1692 a _Congratulatory Ode to Admiral Russell and the other Sea-Commanders for their late Glorious Victory_. It refers in the last verse to the rumours spread against the loyalty of the admirals: ‘Go on, true sons of Honour, still advance The English glory by depressing France: Go on to prove, how much a royal trust Works upon spirits that are brave and just: This our great mistress knew, whose piercing eyes, Unprejudiced by lying calumnies, Could look through every faithful breast, And saw the loyal zeal they afterwards exprest.’ The year after La Hogue was marked by the capture of a large part of the Turkey fleet which Sir George Rooke was convoying. On this event the naval muse is silent. On May 10, 1694, Captain Pickard, in command of two third-rates, the Monmouth and the Resolution, and of the Roebuck fireship, fell in off the French coast with a fleet of fifty-two merchantmen bound for Dunkirk, and destroyed thirty-five (Luttrell, _Diary_, iii. 312; Burchett, p. 214). This is the subject of a ballad entitled _The Valiant Seaman’s Courage_ (p. 125) More interesting is _England’s Glory in the behaviour of brave Killeygrove_, which relates the capture of two French ships, the Content, of sixty guns, and the Trident, of fifty-two, off Pantelaria, by a squadron of six ships, under the command of Captain James Killigrew (p. 126). The action took place about January 27, 1695, and Killigrew lost his life early in the engagement (Burchett, p. 266; Charnock, _Biographia Navalis_, ii. 327).