|
272 LIGHT SQUADRONS AND SINGLE SHIPS 1814 great proportion of killed, it is probable that the severely wounded only are here reckoned. They may have amounted to 20 more ; making the killed 30, and the wounded 60. In the letter which Captain Galwey, with a proper feeling, permitted Captain Phillimore to write, the latter states, that the Clorinde had " a complement of 360 picked men," and that " M. Gerrard," one of the French officers, calculated their loss at 120 men. With respect to the complement, judging by the number of men usually found on board frigates of the Clorinde's class, and allowing, if necessary, that some may have been absent in prizes, we consider the sworn amount, 344, and that for which the head-money was afterwards paid, as likely to be the most correct. In regard to the alleged declaration of " M. Gerrard," unless the slightly wounded were in a very unusual proportion, the statement extracted from the Dryad's log is more to be depended upon ; especially, as it specifies both killed and wounded, and accords exactly, as we shall proceed to show, with the number and distribution of the prisoners. Owing to there being three British men of war in company, it is natural to suppose, that all the prisoners would be taken out of the French ship, with the exception of the badly wounded. Accordingly, out of the 314 assumed survivors of the French crew, the Dryad received on board 125, the Eurotas 92, and the Achates 57 ; leaving on board the Clorinde, by a singular coincidence, the exact number stated by the French officers as the amount of their wounded. Every one of those officers, not left in the Clorinde, appears to have been on board the Dryad; among whom we find, Captain Denis-Lagarde, M. Joseph Lemaître, his first, and M. Vincent Moulac, his second, lieutenant; but we do not see in the list the name of " Gerrard," nor any name resembling it. This person, therefore, was probably one of the wounded left on board the Clorinde. Although we are by no means satisfied, that the Eurotas did not mount one of General Blomefield's 24-pounders in addition to her established armament already particularized, we shall not include that gun, nor, of course, the 18-pounder launch-carronade, in the following:
Had the Eurotas been armed the same as the generality of her lass, this would have been a tolerably fair match ; but the British ship's 24-pounders destroyed the equilibrium. Yet, with a distance which would even have suited carronades, and ^ back to top ^ |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||