Читать книгу Champions of the Fleet. Captains and men-of-war and days that helped to make the empire онлайн

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Our fourth Dreadnought, William the Third’s ship, fought the French at Barfleur and La Hogue, and after that did good service down to the Peace of Ryswick as a Channel cruiser and in charge of convoys. She served all through “Queen Anne’s War,” by chance only missing Benbow’s last fight. Later, the Dreadnought was with the elder Byng—Lord Torrington—at the battle off Cape Passaro, in the Straits of Messina, in 1718, where one, if not two, Spaniards lowered their colours to her. The Dreadnought on that occasion formed one of Captain Walton’s detached squadron, whose exploit history has kept on record, thanks to Captain Walton’s dispatch to the admiral, as set forth in the popular version of it: “Sir, we have taken all the ships on the coast, the number as per margin.” Of that dispatch more will be said elsewhere.[1] The Dreadnought ended her days in George the Second’s reign, at the close of the war sometimes spoken of as “The War of Jenkins’ Ear.”

Two Dreadnought officers, Sir Edward Spragge, who captained our second Dreadnought in the “Four Days’ Fight,” and Sir Charles Wager, a very famous admiral in his day, First Lieutenant of our third Dreadnought in the year before La Hogue, have monuments in Westminster Abbey.