[14] Edward the Third, Act III. Sc. 1.
[15] Built at Chatham in 1777 as a 98-gun three-decker of 1945 tons. The Formidable taken at Quiberon was broken up some ten years previously.
[16] From Mr. Newbolt's verses on a memorial brass in Clifton College chapel.
[17] He was captain of the French frigate L'Aréthuse on May 18, 1759, when she was cut off and captured, off the Brittany coast, by a British squadron; to become a British frigate, and later on the 'Saucy' Arethusa of the celebrated ballad.
[18] Hennequin's Biographie Maritime, art. 'Vaudreuil'; also L. Dussieux's Généraux et Marins du XVIII. Siècle, p. 260. The governorship of the island of Dominica was offered to De Vaudreuil after its capture from Great Britain through treachery. Some of the creole inhabitants of Dominica invited the French over from Martinique, and, on the night of their landing, made the garrison of the principal fort in the island drunk, plugged up the touch-holes of their cannon, and put sand in the locks of their muskets.
[19] Bougainville was born in 1729. He was granted the particle nobiliaire by order of the King as a special favour, escaped the guillotine during the Terror by the merest chance, and died a Senator of the Empire in 1811. Bougainville's name is commemorated in the French navy to-day in a corvette used as a training ship for cadets. The vessel is well known as a visitor to Dartmouth and Plymouth Sound every year.
[20] It was the practice of the Comte de la Charette to blacken the sides of each ship that he commanded. Ordinarily, at this period, ships' sides were of a yellow colour—the planking simply varnished over.
[21] Carlyle, French Resolution, vol. ii. bk. ii. chap. i.
[22] Carronades were short pieces of large calibre, throwing heavy shot, but with a very limited range. They were only of use for fighting at close quarters, when, however, they were terribly destructive. They were invented and first made at the Carron Ironworks in Scotland—whence the name.
[23] Sir Gilbert Blane, Dissertations on Medical Science, vol. i. p. 86.