The Queen of Spithead: Review of the Fleet.
Peter Parley loves our good Queen, and delights to follow her in her various “progresses”—for wherever she appears, light and happiness beams around. The sun seems to welcome her wherever she goes, and bright and fair are the days that belong to her. And one of the brightest and fairest days, notwithstanding a little cloud or so that appeared, was the day when Her Majesty, accompanied by the Prince—whom every true Briton loves for his manly character, and for the good he does to every one—proceeded to visit the British Fleet at Spithead. It was delightful for old Peter to behold the Queen and the Prince, and not less so to see the young Prince of Wales emulating the British Tar, and looking like an embryo Nelson: and his heart beat with ardour at the cheers of the sailors and the booming of the guns; and he wished himself a young man again, and on board of a man-of-war, as he was for many years of his early life. I believe that no one who has been thoroughly soused in salt water ever ceases to love it, and although poor old Peter has now only a pleasure-boat to skull and row and sail about the Deben in, he still loves the sea-breeze and the sea-water, and the smell of tar; and he likes to hear the whistle of the gale in the shrouds, and the cry of the sea-gull, and the voice of the curlew on the ooze; and he would sing with his poor old voice, like a shattered clarionet of former days, “Rule Britannia,” and thank God that he has lived to see the day when England exhibits to the world that she is still able to “rule the waves.”
The Queen at Spithead
The “review” was, indeed, a spirit-stirring sight. The eyes of half London and the hearts of all England were there; and a wonderful thing it was to look upon a fleet such as England never had before, and the thick black cloud of coal-smoke resting upon the horizon, or ascending to the skies in volumes, shewed the result of the innumerable applications of the giant power of steam to the purposes of navigation. Here stood arrayed the mighty force of fourteen-thousand-four-hundred-and-twenty horse-power, concentrated in the holds of the royal ships, impelling these mountain masses with as much ease as some of my young readers would drag their little boat across a puny pond.
The most remarkable fact, bearing on this point, was the celerity and ease with which the Duke of Wellington, the greatest of all the ships, the Agamemnon, and the Impèrieuse—each of them steam impelled—performed their evolutions. The chase, when each ship put forth all her powers, was just continued long enough to establish the superiority of these ships. They are moved by screw-propellers, and all the steam machinery in such large ships is placed beneath the water-line, and below the reach of shot. The ships can steam at pleasure against wind and tide, and thus, really and not metaphorically “rule the waves,” and a steam fleet of eleven hundred guns, such as that we witnessed at Portsmouth, would go far to rule the world.
The Queen, the Prince, and the Royal Family arrived in the “Victoria and Albert” yacht, and a grand salute from all the ships was fired in succession, and so quickly was it given, that from the firing of the first gun to the booming of the last, not more than three minutes elapsed. As Her Majesty approached the fleet, the Queen and Prince Albert mounted the bridge of the yacht over the paddle-boxes, and with the Prince of Wales, and Prince Alfred—both attired as sailors, in white duck trowsers and jackets—surveyed the scene before them with much interest. Her Majesty then entered the royal barge, and with the Prince, and the Royal Children, all went on board the “Duke of Wellington,” as you see them represented in the engraving. The fleet now steamed out to sea in double column. They formed into single line. They then made a feigned attack upon the enemy. After firing a gun or two of defiance, the three foremost ships resolutely advanced, upon which the two divisions closed into one grand line, and upon the signal gun of the “Duke of Wellington,” followed by the tremendous roar of her whole broadside, rapidly discharged from stem to stern, the rattling thunder ran along the line, traversing it as it were in a minute, and again beginning at the other end; main and deck guns, eighteens, thirty-twos, and sixty-fours, banging and thundering for nearly a quarter of an hour without intermission. From the moment of the first discharge, the clouds of white, choking smoke hid everything. The mimic battle was kept up for some time, at last the enemy was supposed to have been repulsed, so the heads of the vessels were put round, and the whole squadron started off homewards at the best of each ship’s speed, and the same thundering followed.
A boat attack was next made, which was fully equal in interest to the “sham fight of the ships,” and the whole day’s proceedings exhibited “Old England” in her proudest glory; and thus terminated a spectacle, which no other country in the world could produce but England, and which well accords with English spirit and English sympathy.
