| Contents Next Page Previous Page 10 Pages >> 10 Pages << |
NAVAL HISTORY of GREAT BRITAIN - Vol I |
||
| 93 |
could not have been less than 250 men and boys; of whom she appears to have lost Captain Dubedat, and 15 officers, seamen, and marines, killed, and 37 wounded. The ship, it is probable, had been one of the 32-gun frigates sold out of the French service at the reduction in 1783 ; several of which carried 12 and 8 pounders on the main deck, and measured from 800 to 850 tons: the Iris measured 688 tons.
Coupling, with so equal a force as evidently existed between these two frigates, the extent of the damage and loss sustained by the British frigate, we must admit that the officers and crew of the French ship deserve credit for the precision of their fire. Had they been as resolute in continuing, as they were bold in commencing, the action, the crippled state of the Iris renders it doubtful on which side victory would have ultimately perched. The affair not reaching that crisis, the Citoyenne-Française * hauled up, singly, for the nearest French port, and the Iris resumed her course before the wind; the latter much indebted, no doubt, to a continuance of the favourable weather, for arriving in safety at Gibraltar, the port of her destination.
On the 27th of May, at about 1 a.m., Cape Finisterre bearing south, 58° east, distant 125 leagues, the British 12-pounder 32 gun frigate Venus, Captain Jonathan Faulknor, and the French 36-gun frigate Sémillante, mounting 40 guns, † Captain Gaillard, descried each other. At 3 h. 30 m. a.m. the Venus tacked ; and at 4 a.m. the Sémillante, having bore down to reconnoitre the stranger, passed to windward of her. The Sémillante soon afterwards hoisted a blue flag on the mizen-peak, and fired two guns to leeward, in quick succession. Upon this, the Venus hoisted her colours, and returned a shot to one which the Sémillante had just before fired to try her adversary's distance. At 4 h. 30 m. a.m. the Sémillante tacked for the Venus, who kept her wind, and carried sail to get the weathergage ; but the former, unwilling to give up that advantage, also kept her wind. At 7 h. 30 m. a.m. the Sémillante fired a few random shot, and at 8 a.m. dropped nearer to the Venus; when the latter opened her fire, and a warm cannonade ensued. The two ships gradually neared each other until 10 a.m., when they were scarcely half a cable's length asunder.
The Sémillante, by this time, had lost her first and second officers, and had her masts, yards, sails, rigging, and hull, much
* This ship's name does not again appear, except as having captured a British merchantman towards the end of 1794. She is then called "la frégate la Citoyenne-Française." -Moniteur, 12 Dec. 1794. This strengthens the supposition, that she had once belonged to the national marine.
† Armed precisely as No. 7 in the table at p. 54. In the first edition of this work we had classed all these ships as 32-gun frigates, according to their original denomination in the French service; but, finding that almost every one of them, at the commencement of the war of 1793, took on board four additional 6-pounders, these ships here stand classed as 36s ; in which we are borne out by most of the lists published in French works.
^ back to top ^