Welsh Journals

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ADMIRAL SIR THOMAS FOLEY. Ill -was dead; he had received three wounds, yet would not leave his post; a fourth cut him almost in two. He desired not to be carried below, but to be left to die upon deck. The flames soon mastered his ship. Her sides had just been painted; and the oil jars and paint buckets were lying on the poop. By the prodigious light of this conflagration the situation of the two fleets could now be perceived, the colours of both being clearly ■distinguishable. About ten o'clock the ship blew up, with a shock which was felt to the very bottom of every vessel. Many of her officers and men jumped overboard, some clinging to the spars and pieces of wreck with which the sea was strewn, •others swimming to escape from the destruction which they momentarily dreaded. Some were picked up by our boats; and some even in the heat and fury of the action were dragged into the lower ports of the nearest British ships by the British sailors. The greater part of her crew, however, stood the •danger till the last, and continued to fire from the lower deck. This tremendous explosion was followed by a silence not less awful: the firing immediately ceased on both sides, and the first sound which broke the silence was the dash of her shattered masts and yards falling into the water from the vast height to which they had been exploded. It is upon record that a battle between two armies was once broken off by an earthquake—such an event would be felt like a miracle ; but no incident in war produced by human means has ever equalled the sublimity of this co-instantaneous pause and all its circumstances. "About seventy of the Orient's crew were saved by the Eng¬ lish boats. Among the many hundreds who perished were the Commodore Casa-Bianca, and his son, a brave boy only ten years old. They were seen floating on a shattered mast when the ship blew up." " With mast and helm and pennon fair, That well had borne their part ; But the noblest thing that perished there Was that young and faithful heart."—Mrs. Hcmans. Only four vessels of the French fleet escaped, and the victory was the most complete and glorious in the annals of naval history. " Victory," said Nelson, " is a name not strong enough for such a scene;" he called it " a conquest." " Of thirteen sail of the line nine were taken and two burnt; of the four frigates one was sunk ; another, the Artemise, was burnt in a villainous manner by her captain. The British loss in killed and wounded amounted to eight hundred and ninety-five. Westcott was the only captain who fell. Three thousand one hundred and five of the French, including the wounded, Avere sent on shore by cartel, and five thousand two hundred and twenty-five perished." Nelson was created Baron Nelson of the Nile and of Burnham