Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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“The flattering wind that late with promis’d aid,

From Candia’s Bay th’ unwilling ship betray’d,

No longer fawns beneath the fair disguise,”

and “not long after, there arose against it a tempestuous wind called Euroclydon,” before which the ship drave under bare poles. We know that she had to be undergirded; cables being passed under her hull to keep her from parting; and lightened, by throwing the freight overboard. For fourteen days the ship was driven hither and thither, till at length she was wrecked off Melita. Sudden gales, whirlwinds, and typhoons are not uncommon in the Mediterranean; albeit soft winds and calm seas alternate with them.

On the 22nd May, 1798, Nelson, while in the Gulf of Genoa, was assailed by a sudden storm, which carried away all the Vanguard’s topmasts, washed one man overboard, killed an unfortunate middy and a seaman on board, and wounded others. This ship, which acted her name at the Nile only two months afterwards, rolled and laboured so dreadfully, and was in such distress, that Nelson himself declared, “The meanest frigate out of France would have been an unwelcome guest!” An officer relates that in the middle of the Gulf of Lyons, Lord Collingwood’s vessel, the Ocean, a roomy 98-gun ship, was struck by a sea in the middle of a gale, that threw her on her beam-ends, so much so that the men on the Royal Sovereign called out, “The admiral’s gone down!” She righted again, however, but was terribly disabled. Lord Collingwood said afterwards that the heavy guns were suspended almost vertically, and that “he thought the topsides were actually parting from the lower frame of the ship.” Admiral Smyth, in his important physical, hydrographical, and nautical work on the Mediterranean, relates that in 1812, when on the Rodney, a new 74-gun ship, she was so torn by the united violence of wind and wave, that the admiral had to send her to England, although sadly in need of ships. He adds, however, that noble as was her appearance on the waters, “she was one of that hastily-built batch of men-of-war sarcastically termed the Forty Thieves!”