passing through the Redoutable which must have been the case if the usual quantity of powder, and the common elevation, had been given to the guns. A circumstance occurred in this situation, which showed in a most striking manner the cool intrepidity of the officers and men stationed on the lower deck of the Victory. When the guns on this deck were run out, their muzzles came into contact with the Redoutable's side; and consequently at every discharge there was reason to fear that the enemy would take fire, and both the Victory and the Temeraire be involved in her flames. Here then was seen the astonishing spectacle of the fireman of each gun standing ready with a bucket full of water, which as soon as his gun was discharged he dashed into the enemy through the holes made in her side by the shot." *

The respectability of the authority has induced us to give this quotation entire, yet we positively deny that the Victory's guns were fired in the manner there stated. Not only have our inquiries fully satisfied us respecting this fact, but we doubt even if the T�m�raire had come in contact with the Redoutable at the period to which the statement refers. When, too, the T�m�raire did lash herself to the Redoutable, all effective opposition on the part of the latter had ceased, to the Victory at least ; and, after firing a few shot, and ascertaining that the T�m�raire was foul on the Redoutable's starboard side, the Victory began to busy herself in getting clear, to seek a more worthy antagonist. This hitherto disputed fact, the details of the T�m�raire proceedings, into which we are now about to enter, will more clearly establish.

Being an extraordinary fast sailing line-of-battle ship, the Victory, urged as she was, would probably have been, like the Royal-Sovereign, far ahead of the ships in her wake ; but that the T�m�raire, having on board very little water or provisions, was, what the sailors call, "flying light". After the T�m�raire, having closed the Victory, had, instead of leading the column as at first proposed, been directed to take her station astern of the Victory � the dismantled state of the latter from the enemy's shot, rendered it very difficult for the T�m�raire to avoid going ahead of her leader ; and to keep astern she was obliged, besides cutting away her studding-sails, occasionally to yaw or make a traverse in her course. Hence the T�m�raire shared with the Victory, although by no means to so great an extent, the damage and loss sustained by the head of the weather column from the enemy's heavy and incessant raking fire. Shortly after the Victory had poured her larboard broadside into the Bucentaure's stern, the T�m�raire opened her fire at the Neptune and Redoutable. When the Victory put her helm a-port to steer towards the Redoutable, the Temeraire, to keep clear of her leader, was

*  Beatty's Narrative, p. 31.

�  See Note, p. 33

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