[7] Nelson was forty-seven when he fell; three years older than Admiral Watson was at his death. They were both also Vice-Admirals of the White.
[8] For a full account of the Monmouth’s midnight battle and Captain Gardiner’s fate, see “Famous Fighters of the Fleet,” pp. 16-35.
[9] Visitors to modern Southsea, going over what remains of the old keep of Porchester Castle, will find scrawled all over the stonework of the walls of the upper apartments many names of the French prisoners of this time, with sometimes the names of their ships and the dates of their capture added.
[10] A full narrative of the campaign and battle is given in “Famous Fighters of the Fleet,” pp. 52-161.
[11] Mr. William Stuart, who died at Gortley, Letterkenny, in April, 1903, at the reputed age of one hundred and twenty, used often to relate how he, as a boy, saw a British frigate arrive in Lough Swilly towing the French captured flagship, and with Wolfe Tone among the prisoners.
[12] Incidentally, and to end the present story, it may be interesting to recall to mind that the Marquess of Donegall is Hereditary Admiral of Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the United Kingdom. The office had a real significance formerly, for Lough Neagh in the past, well within historic times, had a fleet of its own. Sir John Clotworthy, the ancestor of Viscount Massereene, who lived at Antrim Castle, had a patent for building as many vessels as might be needed for the King’s service on Lough Neagh. His fleet set out from Antrim Castle in 1642 to attack the Irish in their fort at Charlemont. The battle between the fleet on the lake and the land forces resulted in the defeat of the men on shore, with their fort, and important consequences. The second Viscount Massereene was as strong a supporter of William of Orange as his ancestor had been of the Stuarts. He was made captain of Lough Neagh, and received 6s. 8d. a day, being bound to build and maintain a gunboat on the lake. The Lough Neagh Navy has disappeared, but the lake has still its admiral in the Marquess of Donegall.
[13] Having regard to the number of foreigners on board the Victory, these facts are in point. For more than fifty years previous to 1794, foreigners were permitted by Act of Parliament to enter on board British merchantmen trading overseas to the extent of three-quarters of the crew. After 1794, “for the encouragement of British seamen,” an Act was passed reducing the proportion of foreigners to one-quarter of the ships’ companies, which, however, still left a large number available at various places for the purposes of impressment for the Navy. As to the “Impress Service”: in 1805, to keep up the supplies of men, forty-three permanent stations or “rendezvous” were maintained in Great Britain and Ireland, with an establishment of twenty-seven captains and sixty-three lieutenants, permanently on duty, established “in those parts of the United Kingdom where seamen chiefly resort, at which stations volunteers and impressed men are asked, and deserters from the Naval Service are apprehended.” They were distributed as follows: London and Thames, two captains and ten lieutenants; Deal and the Downs, Liverpool, and Dundee, a captain and three lieutenants at each place; Falmouth, Hull, Cork, Cowes, Poole, Waterford, Bristol, Londonderry, Leith, Shields, Dublin, Portsmouth, and Gosport, a captain and two lieutenants at each place; Newcastle, Sunderland, Yarmouth, Glasgow and Greenock, Dunbar, Limerick, Southampton, Romsey, Exeter, Lynn, Swansea, Folkestone, Ramsgate, Margate, Lerwick, and the Isle of Man, a captain and one lieutenant, or a lieutenant independently, at each place.
[14] How the Téméraire played her part at Trafalgar is fully related in “Famous Fighters of the Fleet,” pp. 231-275.
[15] “Ab.” stands for Able Seaman; “Ordinary” for Ordinary Seaman; “L.M.” for Landman or Landsmen, the lowest general rating on board a man-of-war, comprising new and raw hands for the most part not yet worked up into shape, though capable of deck duties and at the guns.
[16] Died of their wounds in the week following the battle.