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

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To such a pass had the loss of her supremacy at sea reduced Great Britain in the closing year of our fourth Dreadnought’s career.

Our fifth Dreadnought fought at Trafalgar. She was a 98-gun ship, one of the same set as the famous “fighting” Téméraire. The newspapers of the day made a good deal of her launch, which took place at Portsmouth Dockyard, on Saturday, the 13th of June, 1801. Here is an extract from one account:—

“At about twelve o’clock this fine ship, which has been thirteen years upon the stocks, was launched from the dockyard with all the naval splendour that could possibly be given to aid the grandeur and interest of the spectacle. She was decorated with an Ensign, Jack, Union, and the Imperial Standard, and had the marine band playing the distinguished martial pieces of ‘God save the King,’ ‘Rule Britannia,’ etc. etc. A prodigious concourse of persons, to the amount, as is supposed, of at least 10,000, assembled, and were highly delighted by the magnificence of the ship and the beautiful manner in which she entered the watery element. But what afforded great satisfaction was, that, in the passage of this immense fabric from the stocks, not a single accident happened. She was christened by Commissioner Sir Charles Saxton, who, as usual, broke a bottle of wine over her stem. Her complement of guns is to be 98, and she has the following significant emblem at her head; viz.—a lion couchant on a scroll containing the imperial arms as emblazoned on the Standard. This is remarkably well timed and adapted to her as being the first man-of-war launched since the Union of the British Isles.”