her seamen used seven 9-pound shot as a substitute: a discharge that, at a short distance, must have caused great slaughter.

The detached and confused state of the Spanish fleet at the beginning of the attack, and the consequent partial and irregular manner in which the ships came into action, would render unfair any statement of comparative force drawn up in the usual manner ; that is, by confronting the totals on each side. We shall simply state that, as the British line consisted of 15, so the Spanish line (if line it could ever be called) consisted, at first, of 25, and afterwards of 27 sail, or rather of 26, one ship having, as already stated, fled just before the commencement of the engagement. Those, however, who wish to see the real force of the opponent fleets, may ascertain, with sufficient accuracy, the guns and men of every British ship, by referring to her class in the first annual abstract. The force of the Spanish ships of the three classes, 112s, 80s, and 74s, respectively, may be taken, upon an average, to have been the same as that of the captured ships ; of which, as already has appeared, there were two belonging to the first, and one to each of the other classes.

As to the 130-gun ship, of four decks, we shall have no difficulty in showing, as near as will be necessary, what her force was. The Santisima-Trinidad was built at Havana in the year 1769, as a 112-gun ship, similar to the San-Josef or Salvador-del-Mundo, except probably in possessing rather more breadth of beam. It appears that, some time between the commencement of 1793 and the end of 1796, her quarterdeck and forecastle were formed into a whole deck, barricades built up along her gangways, and ports cut through them, so as to make the total number of 8-pounders on that deck, equal in amount to the 12s on the deck next below it. This accounts for 126 guns : the remaining four, we may suppose, were mounted on the poop. The Santisima-Trinidad was therefore a flush four-decker, that exceeded the three-decked 112s in force, only by fourteen 8-pounders, and four pieces of a still smaller caliber.

The following short table contains the exact force, in guns and men, of the four prizes at the time of their capture:

* Spanish caliber; see Vol. i., p. 43.

† As enumerated in the head-money warrants. It is rather singular that, in an action about which so much has been said and written, no account of the complements of the captured ships should have peen published; not even in the official letter, where the account ought to have appeared.

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