the French at Brest and Lorient. The ships in the latter port ; having, as stated before, quitted Brest with only 15 days' provisions on board, had been compelled, owing to the poverty of the place, to discharge the principal part of their crews ; disease and desertion had gradually thinned the remainder. Towards the end of the year, when the severity of the season obliged the blockading ships to keep farther in the offing, several of the ships at Lorient made an effort to escape from so ill-provided a port, and, by coasting it at favourable opportunities, contrived to reach Brest in safety : two or three others, we believe, shifted their quarters to Rochefort.

On the 17th and 18th of November the English Channel was visited by a westerly gale of such extraordinary violence, as scarcely to fall short of a West Indian hurricane. Rear-admiral Christian, with a squadron of eight sail of the line, having in charge a fleet of 200 transports and West Indiamen with upwards of 16,000 troops on board, was compelled to return to Spithead, after having had the ships of his convoy, with which he had quitted St. Helen's only a day or two before, scattered in every direction. Several of the transports and merchantmen foundered, and others went on shore and were wrecked. Above 200 dead bodies were taken up between Portland and Bridport. While the gale was at its height, the shock of an earthquake was felt in several parts of the kingdom The repairs of the squadron and remaining ships of the convoy made it the 5th of December before the rear-admiral could again put to sea ; but the fleet was again separated in a dreadful storm, which continued for two or three weeks.

Among the ships that nearly became the grave of her crew in the first of these disasters, was the late French three-decker Commerce-de-Marseille. Having been found so badly timbered, and so greatly out of order, as not to be worth the cost of a thorough. repair, she remained at anchor at Spithead until the autumn of the present year ; she then underwent a partial repair, and was armed and equipped for sea. Shortly afterwards, however, the guns on her first and second decks were sent on shore again, and the ports caulked up ; and, fitted as a store-ship, the Commerce-de-Marseille, drawing at the time 29 feet water, formed part of Rear-admiral Christian's expedition to the West Indies. In the gale, the partial effects of which we have just described, this castle of a store-ship was driven back to Portsmouth ; and, from the rickety state of her upper-works, and the great weight of her lading, it was considered a miracle that she escaped foundering. The Commerce-de-Marseille re-landed her immense cargo, and never went out of harbour again ; but the ship was not taken to pieces, and consequently remained on the lists of the navy, until the month of August, 1802.

On the 16th of January, while the British Mediterranean fleet of 15 sail of the line and frigates, still under the command of