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

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Boscawen’s Dreadnought comes next, a sixty-gun ship built in the year 1742. She was the first ship of the line that Boscawen had the command of, and she gave him his sobriquet in the Navy, “Old Dreadnought,” the name of his ship just hitting off the tough old salt’s chief characteristic—absolute fearlessness. An incident that occurred on board the Dreadnought while Boscawen commanded the ship gave the sobriquet vogue. It is, too, a fine sample of what Carlyle calls “two o’clock in the morning courage.”

It was in the year 1744, when we were at war with both France and Spain, one night when the Dreadnought was cruising in the channel. The officer of the watch, the story goes, came down after midnight to Captain Boscawen’s cabin and awoke him, saying, “Sir, there are two large ships which look like Frenchmen bearing down on us; what are we to do?” “Do?” answered Boscawen, turning out of his cot and going on deck in his nightshirt, “Do? why, d⸺ ’em; fight ’em!” The fight did not come off, however, as the suspicious strangers disappeared.