M. Clairbois informs us, that the French Ville-de-Paris, until subsequently raised upon so as to mount 12 or 14 guns more, was a 90-gun ship, " sans gaillards." Her original force we get from his book, and her dimensions and tonnage from the records in the navy-office, the Ville-de-Paris having since (when a 104-gun ship) been captured by the British. To facilitate a comparison that we may afterwards have occasion to make, we subjoin the name, dimensions, and force of a British quarter-decked 90, built in 1756, which was about the time that the Ville-de-Paris herself was built.

It may here be remarked, that flush ships, whether single, two, or three deckers (for the term is equally applicable to all of them), have, according to the English seaman's phrase, a quarterdeck and forecastle: that is, two imaginary lines are drawn across the deck, one even with the foremast, the other with the after side of the gangway-entrance; and that portion of the deck which lies abaft the latter line is called the quarterdeck, that ahead of the former, the forecastle. The term gangway, like many others, is ambiguous in its meaning. It stands for the passage that leads from the quarterdeck to the forecastle, and, in that sense, is rendered in French by "prise-avant." It means, also, the entrance to the ship's deck from the top of the outside ladder; for which there appears no corresponding French term. The ladder nailed to the ship's side they call, " échelle hors le bord."

Shipwrights know of no such ideal decks as quarterdeck and forecastle, in cases where the deck is continuous fore-and-aft ; nor is the French term, "gaillards," at all applicable to them: neither are we aware, whether or not the French naval people make a similar division of the upper deck of their flush ships. Still there are two terms, and those in general use, which, in a great degree, depend for their correctness upon the admission of the very terms, quarterdeck and forecastle, as divisional parts of a flush-deck. For instance, flush vessels, of the smaller sorts especially, are seldom without a raised deck forward, that over-hangs and covers nearly the whole of the imaginary forecastle ;

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