DILECTA 583

In a subsequent note from Mr. Leslie about the pike fishing at Lord Egremont’s, he gives me this little sketch of the way Turner rigged his ship for him with leaves torn out of his sketch book.

19. The following note, also from Mr. Leslie, with its cutting from St. James’s Gazette; and the next one, for which I am extremely grateful, on the words “dickey” and “deck,” bear further on Turner’s meaning in the little black steamer which guides the funeral march of the line of battle ship,-and foretell the time now come when ships

head of her mizenmast, her foreyard, her starboard cathead and bumpkin, and her fore and main topsail yards were shot away; her fore and main masts so wounded as to render them unfit to carry sail, and her bowsprit shot through in several places. Her rigging of every sort was cut to pieces; the head of her rudder was taken off by the fire of the Redoubtable; eight feet of the starboard side of the lower deck abreast of the mainmast were stove in, and the whole of her quarter galleries on both sides carried away. Forty-six men on board of her were killed, and seventy-six wounded.

“It was Lieutenant Kennedy who captured the Fougueux. The Fougueux fouled the Téméraire, whereupon the Téméraire immediately lashed the two vessels together. Kennedy, accompanied by James Arscott, master’s mate, and Robert Holgate, midshipman, with twenty seamen and six marines then jumped on board, and in ten minutes the Fougueux was taken.

“The Téméraire was built with a beakhead, or, in other words, her upper works were cut off across the catheads; a peculiarity which can be observed in Turner’s picture. It was found by experience in the early part of the French war that this mode of construction exposed the men working the guns to the enemy’s fire, and it was afterwards abandoned.

“It has been objected that the masts and yards in the picture are too light for a ninety-eight gun ship; but the truth is that when the vessel was sold she was jury-rigged as a receiving ship, and Turner therefore was strictly accurate. He might have seemed more accurate by putting heavier masts and yards in her; but he painted her as he saw her. This is very important, as it gets rid of the difficulty which I myself have felt and expressed, that it was very improbable that she was sold all standing in sea-going trim, as I imagined Turner intended us to believe she was sold, and answers also the criticism just mentioned as to the disproportion between the weight of the masts and yards and the size of the hull.”

In a further letter (December 17) Mr. Hale White added: “Part of the Téméraire is still in existence. Messrs. Castle, the shipbreakers of Millbank, have the two figures which supported the stern-gallery.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]