EXPLANATOEY INDEX. 403 



side the Diamond ; made a hawser, with a traveller on it, fast 

 to the ship and to the top of the rock ; and in January, 1804, 

 got three long 24's and two 18's hanled up far above his mast- 

 head by sailors who, as they- 'hung like clusters,' appeared 

 ' like mice hauling a little sausage. Scarcely could we hear 

 the governor on the top directing them with his trumpet ; the 

 Centaur lying, close under, like a cocoa-nut shell, to which 

 the hawsers are aflSxed' (Naval Chronicles). 



" In this strange fortress Lieutenant James Wilkie Maurice 

 (let his name be recollected as one of England's forgotten 

 worthies) was established with 120 men and boys, and am- 

 munition, provisions, and water for four months ; and the 

 rock was borne on the books of the Admiralty as his Ma- 

 jesty's ship Diamond Rock, and swept the seas with her guns 

 tUl the 1st of June, 1805, when she had to surrender, for 

 want of powder, to a French squadron of two 74's, a frigate, 

 a corvette, a schooner, and eleven gunboats, after killing and 

 wounding some seventy men on the rock alone, and destroy- 

 ing three gunboats, with a loss to herself of two men killed 

 and one wounded. 



" Remembering which story, who will blame the traveller 

 if he takes off his hat to his Majesty's quondam corvette, as 

 he sees for the first time its pink and yellow sides shining in 

 the sun above the sparkling seas over which it domineered of 

 old?" 



I may add that the sailors were greatly amused at their 

 very remarkable sloop, and invariably used nautical terms 

 when speaking of it, or "her." For example, when they had 

 by extreme ingenuity " parbuckled " a couple of guns nearly 

 to the summit of the rock, they named them the " topgallant 

 battery." Everything went on exactly as on board a man-of- 

 war. Watches were set and relieved according to naval dis- 

 cipline, observations were daily taken, and, except that there 

 was no man at the wheel, and no sails had to be looked after, 

 the crew had just the same duties as if the rock had been a 

 ship afloat. 



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