Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-01-12 00:00:00

THE NAVIES OF ENCILANft & FRANCE.
An article wrWen.with,eonsidetnljie ability,, and
with that minntt-siegard to details which, td -the
uninformed. would --seem- -to indicate a-knowledge
of the subject,.has:heenipuhh.shed in the gonversa-
tibtil TiXicon of Leipsic. The Times has reprinted
the entire article, though it.occUpies.about eight. of
its colunis, thus-bring it 'currency- and-impo rtanee.-
The object of it is to show that the English navy
is iit'present not strongeo•thon ;that of -.France in
ships/and that it is inferior in'tepupment, officers;
and men. , English sailors, the writer says, are hot
superior to those of Germany ! and though he
bannotpliSpute the triumphs we achieved in the
last wtti; he greatly underrates them,, and tries to

splain them,away.-- 1' ,
We:Allould not have though
ItiN; the: article, if

t it necessary to

Ire endorsed

-6:m§ciszyti§nc

-ar its

ranee d din7eSiftlic

which -entirely --disentitle ythe
For if he commit such

toiconti

blunders iii lar

matters of historical .record and

• .1
notoriety,! whatconfidence can be felt where he
waite& da facts which lie could learn only, :from
)fficial secrets of our arsenals ,arid our

wing tl:

c,o,ffies

lid open to his inspec

- ,
The. greatest and most palpable of his blunders
is the assertion, that: iniths last war we took from
France and her allies 65 sail of the line, and-180
.frigaiesi and that we lost 13 sail' of the line -arid
38 frigates !!!' the :fact being, that we took Or
destroyed !142 sail of the line, .and 244 frigate,S;
while. France and her allies took from us only. 5
sail of the line, 2 ships of 30 guns, and 14 frigates.-
To give-the details of our own successes, would be
tedious, the partieulars of our losSes are a 'brief
stogy._" The line-of-battle ships which ,we lost
taken November' .6,
1 n frit;ntn • • rr.:.

klexan der

taken Uy Lord Bridport, -in 1795, the Bet:Wick,-

whip' ran !her way to port under jurymasts, was
`fa-ken; Xarch,i7th, 1795, by a French fleet of 15 sail
;of the line'; retaken at Trafalgar—The. Censeur,
which, with the Ca. Ira, 84, was .taken March 1.3 th,;
1795, from the fleet already alluded to, by Admiral
Hotham, When on her way to England under jury-
mastS, October 7, was taken by a French squadron
—the Hannibal,- 74, grounded under a _battery at
Algesiras, when attacking a French squadron there,
July 5, 1801—azkd the Swiftsure, 74,.was taken by
four sail- Of the line and a frigate, June 24th; 1801,
and retaken at Trafalgar.
Of that anomalous. and long since exploded class,
the two-decked 50s, two were taken ; the Leander,
on her: Way to England "with 'despatches .of the
-P 4" Nile, by the .Genereux, one of the
745, and a futritive • from the same

lirjek' class

battle, on the 18th of August, 1798, after a six
hours' action, in which she intlicted.a loss on her
colos4al'opponent equal to the number of her own
crew ; and the Calcutta, which 'sacrificed. herself
by a 'French squadron of five

to save her convoy

sail o£ _ti

e line, Sept. 26, 1805. The Leander was
recove,fed at Corfu, the Calcutta was among the
shiph burnt byLord'Coehrane in Basque Roads.

4, 1793, by a squadron, having previously engaged
and. sunk one of them, a ship very superior to her-
self—the Castor, 32, July 9, 1794, by a squadro,

such she was r

-taken three weeks

Ambuscadc

32, taken through oyer

confidenci

.
and lubberly inismanamement, by an inferior ship
afterwards re-taken by the Victory ; the Success

32, Feb. 14, Isol,.byn-, squadron ;the Miners e, 38,
grounded under the,batteri6 at Cherbourg July 2
-1803, previously a 'French priie and afterward:

re-taken'; the illanche, 36, July 19, 1805, taken
by a squadron and burnt; the Cleopatra, 32,
Feb. 17, 1805, by the Milan, a ship nearly double
her force, re-taken six days after, and the Milan
taken by. the Leander,; the Junon, 38, Dec. 13, 1809,
by four frigates and burnt ; previously taken from
the French; the Prosperine, 32, Feb. 28, 1809, by
two line-of-battle ships and two frigates—the

Iphigenie, 36, and Nereide 36, August-25, 1810
Grounded in an attack on the Isle of France, re.

covered soon at

It the capture of the colony

the Guerrierc, 38, April 19, 1812, and Java, 38,
Dec. 29, 1812, simiebyAß Copstitution; and the
Macedonian, 38, taken by the .United States. Oct
25, 1812; the American s

filed fi

es having

each been laid down for a lii
having the length; stoutne,s,

Le-of-battleship, and
ind_vars of one.

These are; all.the British men-of-War and frigates
taken or destroyed by the. enemy from' 1793 to
1815 —twenty-M.le,, multiplied .by the German Cri-
tic to ninety-six, As hoes iedifeed our captures
4MA the enemy from 387
.ta..26.). . What reliance
can be placed on the statements of such a writer?
Again, ,he aflinni that, " at the conclusion of
peace, France possessed only sixty•;nine ships of war.
of which the greatest nuMber were small, and not
seaworthy." This is the very opposite of the
truth; for Napoleon had been making strenuous
exertions to restore his navy. At the end of the
war he had 22 sail of the line at Antwerp, and 9
more building; .23 noble ships at Toulon fully
equipped, six, of theni- being three-deckers Of the
largest class,with thiee others building; two ships
at Cherbourg,-and at least ten at Brest,--L'Orient,
and other ports in the Bay of Biscay, not to include
nine in the Texel, Which, by the previous Assertion
of the independence .of, Holland, fell. into the hands
of the Dutch. k. !Again, we say, what reliance can
be placed on such a writer ?

He explains the victories we achieved by our sui

rior state of preparation at the beginning of the war ;
the reverse was notoriously the case—by the very
inferior gunnery of the French, who, he says, fired
slowly and inaccurately; and yet it is- notorious
that every care was taken to make them good
artillerists and by the heavier metal of the
British ships, and their force in excess of
their nominal armament. The first plea is
untrue, for not : only were French • shot
heavier by one-twelfth than English of the
same nominalweight, but where the 'English
placed' 32-Pounders on the lower-deck battery, and
the heavy carronades ' on the quarter-deck, the
French had 36-pounders, whose shot, for the
reason just mentioned; weighed 391 b. The second
plea applies to both -.navies, for the invention of
uarronades allowed these handy little pieces to be
mounted on the poop, •and, additional, on the
quarter deck and forecastle. • Thus from eight to
ten additional guns were carried by men-of-war
and frigates, which nevertheless retained in both
navies their previous rating. The writer alludes
to the Belleisle, as an example of this excess,
which carried, he says, 90 guns, though rated
at 74. Thnßelleisle was a 74 of the very largest
and heaviest class, a class of which we had not one
at the beginning of the war, and only • 13 out
of 157 74s at the end of it; but she is a most unfor-
tunate illustration for the writer, siuce she was a
French ship, taken as the Formidable, by Lord
Bridport, off Belleisle, in 1795 ; andthere being
already a Formidable in the-navy, also a French
prize, she was named from the scene of her cap-
ture. To-take the three greatest naval battles--
on the first' of. June, the broadside force of the
French fleet exceeded that of the English by
neatly 5,0001 b. of shot ; at the Nile, with 13
ships • each, the respective broadside force was
10,9001 b. and 14,0001 b. ; and at Trafalgar' the
enemy's superiority was as 11 to 9 in ships,
and 5 to- 4 in .guns.: So much for the attempts
of this writer to explain 'away our success. Other
libels are •so gross as to refute themselves. Dis-
cipline in the English navy, he says, is far inferior
to that in the French. " Excesses such as daily
occur among English sailors—such, for example,
when a ship is ordered to sea, as that seamen,
petty officers, yea, even officers, are brought on
board drunk by the police —are not possible in
France ! ! !"

We should not have thought it necessary
to notice a publication characterised by such
ignorance and hostile prejudice, if the lead-
ing London journals had not shown themselves
so incompetent to deal with the subject. The Times
reprinted it last week. The Morning Chronicle
says that the writer has discussed it " with ample
knowlede of details, and on the whole with great
fairness.' If English journalists, who ought to
know better, thus receive the fiction, and lend
themselves to give it publicity and importance,
how must it be received on the Continent ?—.Royal
Cornwall Gazette.