90 APPENDIX. 



of battle, for instance in light winds, as in the action of Trafalgar, by bringing up the 

 sternmost vessels of the fleet, or afterwards, during the continuance of the engagement, 

 removing a disabled ship from a perilous position. Thus had a steamer been lashed alongside 

 the Prince, of 98 guns, she might have been brought up to the fight, in which she could, 

 from the lightness of the wind, unfortunately take but little part ; and the same facility being 

 rendered to the other sternmost ships, they might, in a greater degree, have participated in that 

 glorious day, whilst the steamer, being sheltered by the larger hull of a line-of-battle ship, 

 would have been in little danger. The statement we have thus made, however, includes but 

 a small portion of the beneficial co-operation of steam power in such instances; and it would 

 be foreign to our purpose to enter upon the subject at large ; although we are induced to 

 allude to the case of the Belleisle and Bellerophon in that great sea-fight, particularly the 

 former vessel, which, after she was dismasted, lay an unmanageable log upon the water, for 

 some time exposed to the attack of four ships, each her superior in force ; and though, in the 

 service of extricating this ship from the position in which she was so nobly defended, the 

 steamer would have been- in a situation of greater peril, yet the intrepidity of British seamen 

 would not have failed to accomplish it. 



The squadron, assembled at Malta on the 8th of February, and which it was deemed 

 necessary should at once proceed to sea, consisted of one first-rate and five eighty-gun ships. 

 The Medea, having been rapidly prepared and the steam " raised," was attached to the 

 Caledonia of 120 guns, and the ship cast loose from her moorings : the sea at this time was 

 beating nearly over the turreted battlements of St. Elmo, and throwing its spray into the 

 opposite fortress of Ricassoli ; while further up the harbour the half-spent surge rolled into the 

 embrasures of the low batteries of St. Angelo, causing the ships to ride uneasy even at their 

 secure and sheltered moorings. Expectation was raised to its highest pitch, and the enthusiastic 

 population of La Valette flocked to its ramparts as they were wont to do, when, in the olden 

 time, the proud soldiers of the Cross proceeded forth in their galleys, arrayed in all the panoply 

 of war, to chastise the marauding infidel. Many were the doubts raised as to the possibility of 

 the Medea towing this immense fabric against the fresh wind and beating sea which opposed 

 her egress, particularly when, on reaching the narrow part of the entrance, the Caledonia was 

 seen to pitch heavily, as she encountered the full force of the wave, which rolled in from the 

 open Mediterranean. Still they kept on at a rate never less than two miles and a half an 

 hour; and in seventy minutes from the time that this heavy vessel was loosened from her 

 moorings, the steamer cast off', and, having thus left her sufficiently distant from the land to 

 be safely navigated under sail, returned into harbour for another ship. In this manner all 

 the fleet were taken out, the whole being effected in four hours and ten minutes, after which 

 the fires were extinguished on board the Medea, and she pursued her course as a sailing 

 vessel in company with the squadron ; the whole cost of coals and other engine stores 

 expended on this occasion amounting only to 3. 6s. 1 



1 Although it is not our purpose to give a history of the Government steam marine, we are induced to record another 

 instance in which the efficiency of an Admiralty steamer was fully tested. 



In March, 1832, on the first alarm of cholera in this country, the transport-ship, William Forbes, of 600 tons, left the 

 river with convicts to proceed to New South Wales, and put into Plymouth Sound, in consequence of some cases of 



