which was individually felt by the nation with the deepest concern. The protection of the homewardbound Baltic fleet, the preventing the Dutch from failing to the fouthward, and the relief of Gibraltar, were the great naval ob jects ftill in view; and were each of them fingly of the very firft importance. It was then a moft critical juncture to lofe one of the best commanders, the beft fhips, and a number of the best officers and feamen in the British fervice; and this lofs not to be fuftained in the arduous conflict with a brave enemy, or under the exposure of the more dreadful fury of the elements, but at home in harbour, and in a state of the greatest apparent fecurity. Several of thofe fhips which were in the best condition for fea, had proceeded to the Downs, under Admiral Milbanke, in order to attend to the motions of the Dutch, while the rest of the fleet were in a hafty state of equipment at Portimouth, and replenishing their stores of water and provifions for the defigned expedition to Gibraltar, which was now become an object of the utmost urgency; and even a general cry rifing through the nation at the relief being fo long deferred, without regard to the neceffities by which it was occafioned. In this ftate of things it was found neceffary that the Royal George of 108 guns, commanded by the gallant Admiral Kempenfeldt, and long held as the firft fhip in the British navy, fhould receive a fort of flight careen, which the feamen, in their peculiar phrafeology, call a parliamentheel: the fhip being to be laid in VOL. XXV. a certain degree upon her fide while the defects under water, which occafion the examination, are rectified. This seems to be a common operation in cafes where the defects are not fo great as to require a thorough careen, or where the delay, as in the prefent inftance, of going into dock cannot be difpenfed with; and being ufually practifed in fill weather and smooth water, is supposed to be attended with fo little difficulty or danger, that the admiral, captain, officers, and crew, all continued on board, and neither guns, ftores, water, or provisions, were removed. This business was undertaken betimes Aug. 29. in the morning, a gang of carpenters from the dock attending to affift her own; and, it is faid, that finding it neceffary to ftrip off more of her fheathing than was at firft expected, their eagerness to come at the leak, induced them to heel her a ftrake more upon her fide than had been intended, and than poffibly the commanders knew. The fhip, as is ufually the cafe upon coming into port, was crowded with people from the fhore; particularly women, who were not eftimated at lefs than 300. Among thefe were many of the wives and children of the feamen and petty officers, who, knowing the fleet was to fail upon diftant and perilous fervice, eagerly embraced the opportunity of coming to fee their husbands and fathers. Between eight and nine hundred of the crew of the Royal George, including marines, were then on board. In this fituation, about ten in the morning, the admiral being [*P] writing writing in his cabin, and much the greater part of the people happening then to be between decks, a fudden and unexpected fquall of wind threw the thip fatally upon her fide, and her gun ports being open, and the motion of the cannon probably increafing the violence of the fhock, fhe almoft in ftantly filled with water, and went to the bottom. A victualler which lay alongfide the Royal George, was fwallowed up in the whirlpool, which the fudden plunge of fo vaft a body in the water occafioned; and feveral fmall craft, though at fome moderate diftance, were in the moft imminent danger. The admiral, with a number of brave officers, and, in general, most of those who were between decks, perifhed. The guard, including thofe who happened to be along with them, on the upper deck, were more fortunate; the greater part being faved by the boats of the fleet. About feventy others were likewife faved. The exact number of people on board at the time could not be afcertained; but it was fuppofed that from 900 to 1000 were loft. Something about 300, moftly if not entirely, of the fhip's company were faved. Captain Waghorne, whofe gallantry in the North Sea battle under Admiral Parker, had procured him the command of this fhip, had the fortune, though feverely battered and bruifed, to be faved; but his fon, a lieutenant of the Royal George, happening to be one of thofe who were unfortunately below, perished. Such was the fate of the Royal George, which carried the tallest mafts, the heaviest metal, and had the greatest number of flags hoifted in her, of any fhip in the British navy. She had been repeatedly the feat of command under almost all our great commanders, and upon the greateft occafions during both the former and the prefent war; and had been peculiarly diftinguifhed under Lord Hawke, in the celebrated battle against M. Conflans, when the French fleet was entirely ruined; and the funk the Superbe of 70 guns, by a fingle broadfide, and drove the Soleil Royal of 84 guns on fhore, where he was burnt. The lofs of the fhip, notwithstanding the critical period at which it happened, would not however have been much thought of, if it had not been for the brave men whe perifhed fo unfortunately in her. Admiral Kempenfeldt, though near feventy years of age, was peculiarly and univerfally lamented. He was held both abroad and at home, to be, in point of profeffional fcience, knowledge, and judgment, one of the first naval officers in the world; particularly in the art of manoeuvring a fleet, he was confidered by our greatest commanders as unrivalled; and his excellent qualities as a man, at leaft equalled his profeffional merits as an officer. His father was a Swedish gentleman, who coming early into the English fervice, generously followed the ruin ed fortunes of his mafter, James the Second. Being recalled by Queen Anne after the death of that unfortunate monarch, and ferving with diftinétion in her wars, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel; and was at the time of his death lieutenant lieutenant-governor of the island the great theatre of the world, as of Jersey. That gentleman's to attract the attention of all the private character was fo admira- informed part of mankind; and ble, as to be depicted and immor- its fiege and defence began to wie talized by Addifon, in the Specta- in celebrity with the most famous tors; where it has ever been ad- of thofe recorded in ancient or mired under the well known ap- modern hiftory. Even those napellation of Captain Sentry. tions which we account barbarous, and who have communicated that appellation to fo large and fo fine a portion of the coafts of Africa, were led by that irrefiftible fympathy which the exertions valour, in its arduous struggles againft fuperior power, produces in the fierceft and most lawless minds, to be deeply interested in this event. A large fum of money, which did honour to the feelings of the public, and was correfpor.dent to that generous benevolence and bounty which fo highly diftinguifh the nation, was immediately raised by fubfcription in London, for the relief of the widows, children, and other depending relations of thofe who had perifhed by this fatal accident. The Dutch fleet, which had for feveral days been cruizing in the North Sea, having returned to the Texel, and our great convoy from the Baltic fo nearly arrived as to be out of danger, the fquadron which had been detached to attend to thefe fervices under Admiral Milbanke and Commodore Hotham, returned with the utmost expedition, in or der to accompany the fleet in the Sept. 11th. expedition to Gibraltar. Upon this junction, Lord Howe failed from Portsmouth with thirty-four fhips of the line, feveral frigates and fire-fhips, a fleet of tranfports, victuallers, and store-fhips, with a body of troops on board, for the relief of that garrifon. He was accompanied by the Admirals Milbanke and Sir R. Hughes, as well as by Commodore Hotham, and by as brave and able a fet of naval officers as had ever been joined in any fervice. Gibraltar was now indeed be come an object fo confpicuous on The joy of the Spanish king upon the taking of Fort St. Philip, was manifeft and extreme. If it be true, as has been reported, that the plan of that expedition and fiege were entirely laid by himself, it is not to be wondered at, that the fuccefs of fuch an effay fhould greatly increase the fatisfaction which the recovery of 10 confiderable an island, and so ancient an appendage to his crown, would otherwife have afforded. In fuch a state of temper, it was no lefs natural that the immediate inftruments in giving effect to the defign fhould not be forgotten. The Duke de Crillon was accordingly appointed captain-general of the Spanish armies; and Don Jofeph Moreno, who commanded the marine in that expedition, was advanced to high naval rank. Thefe rewards, however, looked forward as well as retrofpectively; they were intended as the earnest of future fervice; and the con queror of Minorca was destined to the recovery of Gibraltar. No means were neglected, nor [*P]2 expence expence fpared, to infure the fuccefs of this défign. Spain found by experience that all her attempts in the ufual forms upon the place, whether by fea or by land, were totally ineffective; and that the cruel measure of destroying the town, odious as it was, went no farther than to the extermination of the inhabitants, without tending in the fmalleft degree to the reduction of the garrifon. It forely wounded her pride, that the utmoft exertions of her power fhould in the face of the world be for fo many years baffled, in the unavailing conflict of a vaft and powerful empire, with a handful of men fhut up on a barren rock. The court was likewife greatly and particularly irritated, through the difgrace which attended the deftruction of their works and batteries in the preceding year by the garrifon. So that ambition, honour, pride, and revenge were all concurrent in urging to the utmoft exertions of power and of fkill for the conqueft of that place; and as all former exertions had failed, the invention and application of new means became a inatter of neceffity. It could not well be fuppofed, while Gibraltar was fo long held out as an object of attention and admiration to the world, that the powerful motives of fame and honours, and the ftrong paffion that tends to the exercife and difplay of talente, fhould not among the great number of fcientific and ingenious men with which Europe abounds, have excited the genius and induftry of fome or other to the difcovery of means for overcoming those obstacles of art and nature, which had hi therto been found infurmountable in all attempts upon the place. Nor could it be doubted, under the circumftances we have feen, that fuch projects, if at all feafi. ble, would be fedulously attended to. The Chevalier de Arcon, a French engineer of high note, however, feemed to be the hero deftined to the fall of Gibraltar. His plan was to highly approved of, that the king himself is faid to have taken a part in its modification or adjustment; hoping to have borne away a royal hare of the honour in this inftance as well as in that of Minorca. The plan had been propofed in the latter part of the preceding year; the preparations, though vaft and exceedingly expensive, were now nearly completed; and the reduction of the place was not only deemed certain, but the powers to be used were fo prodigious and terrible, that little lets than the annihilation of the fortress was expected to be the confequence of any great obftinacy of defence in the garrifon. In the eagerness which prevailed at Madrid for the carrying of this point, it had been propofed to bring a whole fleet to the direct battery and attack of the place, on all fides by fea, while the army was to carry on a furious affault by land; and the facrifice of from ten to twenty fhips of war, as the occafion might require, was decreed to be the contented price of fuccefs. The French engineer ridiculed this fcheme as wild and incompetent. He fhewed that it would be attended with the certain de fruction ftruction of the fhips, without producing the smallest effect upon the fortrefs. His plan went to the conftruction of floating batteries or fhips upon fuch a principle, that they could neither be funk nor fired. The first of these properties was to be acquired by the extraordinary thicknefs of timber with which their keels and bottoms were to be fortified; and which was to render them proof to all danger in that refpect, whether from external or internal violence. The fecond danger was to be oppofed by fecuring the fides of the hips wherever they were expofed to fhot, with a strong wall, compofed of timber and cork a long time foaked in water, and including between, a large body of wet fand; the whole being of fuch a thickness and denfity, that no cannon-ball could penetrate within two feet of the inner partition. A conftant fupply of water was to keep the parts expofed to the action of fire always wet; and the cork was to act as a sponge in retaining the moisture. For this purpofe, ten great fhips, from 600 to 1400 tons bur. then (fome of them faid to be of 50 or 60 guns) were cut down to the ftate required by the plan; and 200,000 cubic feet of timber was with infinite labour worked into their construction. To protect them from bombs, and the men at the batteries from grape or defcending fhot, a hanging roof was contrived, which was to be worked up and down by fprings with eafe, and at pleafure; the roof was compofed of a ftrong rope-work netting, laid over with a thick covering of wet hides; while its floping pofition was calculated to prevent the fhells from lodging, and to throw them off into the fea before they could take effect. The batteries were covered with new brafs cannon of great weight; and fomething about half the number of fpare guns of the fame kind, were kept ready in each fhip, immediately to fupply the place of thofe which might be over-heated, or otherwife difabled in action. To render the fire of these batteries the more rapid and inftantaneous, and confequently the more dreadfully effective, the ingenious projector had contrived a kind of match to be placed on the lights of the guns, of fuch a nature as to emulate lightning in the quicknefs of its confumption and the rapidity of its action, and by which all the guns on the battery were to go off together, as if it had been only a fingle fhot. But as the red-hot hot from the fortrefs was what the enemy moft dreaded, the niceft part of this plan feems to have been the contrivance for communicating water in every direction to restrain its effect. In imitation of the circulation of the blood in a living bo' dy, a great variety of pipes and canals perforated all the folid workmanship in fuch a manner, that a continued fucceffion of water was to be conveyed to every part of the veffels; a number of pumps being adapted to the pur pofe of an unlimited supply. By this means, it was expected that the red-hot fhot would operate to the remedy of its own mifchief, as the very action of cutting thro' thofe pipes would procure its immediate extinction. So that thefe terrible machines, teeming with [*P] 3 every |
