FREiN'CII IRON-CLAD SQUADRON. 195 



been made by fiiiy borij' with an exactrsess, and under the conditions sufficient to 

 enable us to guess at the results even approximately. In other respects the ram 

 does not seem to injure any of the nautical qualities ot the ship unless it be during 

 changes of course very slowly executed, and then it sensibly retards tiie quick- 

 ness of tiie operation; but this is not a defect tliat we need prncticallj'- take into 

 account. 



Such are the ships of which the experimental squadron consisted. It is only 

 right to add, tliat the Solferino and ILagenta, as well as the Invincible, the 

 Normandie and the Napoleon are the work exclusively of a builder, M. Dupuy de 

 Lome, who has been designated in a document distributed by order of the Queen 

 of England and signed by Admiral Spencer R.obinson, Comptroller of the Navy, as 

 *°'the most able designer of ships of war in Europe whose success has been so re- 

 markable." 



On the 2'7th September, at one o'clock, p m., the sqadron sailed from the channel 

 of Cherbourg in search of one of the gales which almost always rage about the 

 equinoxes, and wdiich it was destined to meet sooner perhaps that) it desired. For» 

 aot only weie the complements of men not completed, failing indeed of one-third 

 of the regulation number, but they had hardly yet got into order, and many of the 

 men on board were altogether strange to the new models, while some of the me- 

 chanics even among the masters, had never before seen fittings like those they had 

 to superintend. Nobody would have disliked to have a few days of fine weather 

 before them to enable them to look about them. From the 28th, however, the 

 sea became so rough, and the breeze fi eshened with such strength that the vessels 

 of the squadron in sight were all under their foul-weather canvass. On the 29th 

 there was a lull ; the sea went down, leaving only a heavy swell, and the wind 

 fell, but changed during the day nearly all round the compass from N.YiT. to E., 

 through S., which is an almost infallible sign of the weather they were going to 

 have next day, and of the gale which was let loose with its full force during the 

 night of (he SOth Sept. to the 1st October, blowing steadily from the N.W. The 

 squadron which had now sighted the lights of Ushant, and were t/ien standing 

 out to sea towards the Seilly islands, that is to say, going with the wind directly 

 in their teeth, was dibpersed by its violence and could not reassemble till the 

 morrow, entering Brest on the 3rd to repair the damages inflicted by (he storm. 



The test was everything that could be desired, for they had certainly encoun- 

 tered one of the most violent of atlantic gales. The disasters which it caused on 

 the coasts of Brittany and England are unhappily only the too certain proofs of 

 its violence. The waves reached a height very rarely attaieed in these seas. By 

 measurement on board the Solferino and Magenta, they gave a result of from 9 to 

 10 metres. This would be very considerable in any sea, and I find some memo- 

 randa of my own experience which do not leave me in any doubt of the value o' 

 such a figure. In the month of April, 1844, while doubling the Cape of Good 

 Hope, that is to say at the beginning of the bad weather in those ladtudes, I had 

 the annoyance of being disagreeably knocked about during 16 consecutive days of 

 foul weather, in the Serene frigate. At that time the naval nund was much 

 piqued at M. Arago who had allowed himself some rather lively pleasantry at 

 the expense of Admiral Dumont d'Urville, about a figure which the latter had 



