LORD HOWE.

THIS brave old Admiral, who commenced the splendid series of triumphs which signalised our navy during the last great war, was born in 1725. He was the second son of Lord Viscount Howe. He was educated at Eton, and at the age of fourteen entered on board the Severn of 50 guns, commanded by the Hon. Captain Legge, and which formed part of the squadron destined for the South Seas under Commodore Anson. He next served on board the Burford, which was one of the squadron detached in 1743 from Sir Chaloner Ogle's fleet, to reduce the town of La Guyra on the coast of Caraccas. The Burford suffered much in this enterprise, and Captain Lushington was killed. Mr. Howe was appointed acting-lieutenant by the commodore, and in a short time returned to England with his ship; but the commission not being confirmed by the Admiralty, he returned to his patron in the West Indies.

Sir Chaloner appointed him Lieutenant of a sloop of war; and being employed to cut out an English merchantman, which had been taken by a French privateer under the guns of the Dutch settlement of St. Eustatia, he executed the difficult and dangerous enterprise with the greatest gallantry and judgment. In 1745 Lieutenant Howe was raised to the rank of Commander, in the Baltimore sloop of war, which joined the squadron then cruising on the coast of Scotland under the command of Admiral Smith. During this cruise the Baltimore, in company with another armed vessel, fell in with two French frigates of 30 guns, with troops and ammunition for the service of the Pretender, which she instantly attacked by running between them. In the action which followed, Captain Howe received a wound in his head, which at first appeared to be fatal. He, however, soon discovered signs of life, and, when the necessary operation was performed, returned to the deck, and continued to fight his ship until the Frenchmen, notwithstanding their superiority in men and weight of metal, were glad to sheer off. For his good conduct in this action Howe was immediately made Post-captain.

After being employed on various stations, be about 1756 obtained the command of the Dunkirk of 60 guns, which was among the ships that were commissioned, from an apprehension of a rupture

with France. This ship was one of the fleet with which Admiral Boscawen sailed to obstruct the passage of the French fleet into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, when Captain Howe took the Alcide, a French ship of 64 guns, off the coast of Newfoundland. A powerful fleet being prepared, in 1757, under the command of Sir Edward Hawke, to make an attack upon the French coast, Captain Howe was appointed to the Magnanime, in which ship he compelled the fort on the Isle of Aix to surrender.

In 1758, by the death of his brother, who was killed in action in America, Howe, who had now obtained the rank of Commodore, succeeded to the family estates and honours. But he still was true to the sea, and was in constant active employment. In 1759 he was on board of his old ship the Magnanime in the action between the English fleet and the French under De Conflans. Howe greatly distinguished himself in this battle, in which the Thésée and the Formidable were captured from the enemy. When he was presented to the King by Sir Edward Hawke on this occasion, his Majesty said, "Your life, my Lord, has been one continued series of services to your country." Lord Howe continued to serve, as occasion required, in the Channel; and in the summer of 1762 he removed to the Princess Amelia, of 80 guns, having accepted the command as captain to the Duke of York, Rear-Admiral of the Blue, and serving as second in command under Sir Edward Hawke in the Channel.

In October, 1770, he was made Rear-Admiral of the Blue, and Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean fleet. Hawke (then Lord Hawke) said publicly of him in the House of Lords, when some remark had been made about Howe's promotion, "I advised his Majesty to make the promotion. I have tried my Lord Howe on important occasions; he never asked me how he was to execute any service, but always went and performed it."

In 1776 he sailed on board the Eagle for North America. When France (in 1778) became a party in the American war, the French Admiral D'Estaing appeared on the 11th of July, in sight of the British fleet at Sandy Hook, with a considerable force of line-of-battle-ships in complete equipment and condition. Most of the ships under Lord Howe had been long in service, were not well-manned, and were inferior in size to the French vessels. But by judicious arrangement and firm resistance Howe made D'Estaing sheer off, and he throughout the rest of the summer

of that year held his own with an inferior force against D'Estaing.

Howe returned to England at the end of 1778, and he was sent to relieve Gibraltar, which he completely accomplished. Peace was concluded shortly after Lord Howe's return from performing this important service; and in January, 1783, he was nominated First Lord of the Admiralty. That office, in the succeeding April, he resigned to Lord Keppel, but was re-appointed on the 30th of December in the same year. On the 24th of September, 1787, he was advanced to the rank of Admiral of the White; and in July, 1788, he finally quitted his station at the Admiralty. In the following August he was created an Earl of Great Britain.

On the commencement of the war, in 1793, Earl Howe took the command of the western squadron at the particular and personal request of the King. On the 19th of May, 1794, his Lordship being off Brest, it was discovered that the French fleet had put to sea; on the morning of the 28th, the enemy was discovered to windward, and some partial actions took place. At last, on "THE GLORIOUS FIRST OF JUNE," Howe succeeded in bringing on a general engagement. He had twenty-five ships-ofthe-line under his command: the French Admiral Villaret had twenty-six, but his ships were greatly superior in size, in their aggregate number of guns and men, and in their weight of metal. Lord Howe at daybreak stood towards them, and on coming abreast of them, at about seven in the morning, he wore to the larboard tack, while the French waited his approach in battle order. Having made the necessary arrangements in his line for opposing his largest ships to the largest ships of the enemy, Howe lay to, and intimated by signal that there was time for the men to breakfast before going into action. At about halfpast eight he made the signal for the English fleet to form in close order. Our ships were ranged in one line abreast of each other, while the French line was formed lengthways with their broadsides to our bows. According to Lord Howe's orders our ships were to charge, as it were, the flank of the French line; each English ship was to single her opponent, and breaking through the French line close to that opponent's stern, to range along side of her and engage her to leeward, so that it would be impossible for the French ships, when beaten, to escape. Accordingly he himself in the Queen Charlotte of 100 guns steered for the Montagne, Villaret-Joyeuse's

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ship, which mounted 120 guns. Howe kept the signal for close action flying, and the Queen Charlotte forced her way through the French line so close to the stem of the Montagne that the ensign on the French flag-staff brushed the Queen Charlotte's shrouds. As the Queen Charlotte thus passed, she poured a crushing broadside into the Montagne's stern, but could not round to and engage her as intended, as the Jacobin, a French eighty-four, which was next the Montagne in their line, had, just as the Queen Charlotte came on, quitted her position in order to avoid the raking fire which Howe's ship would have poured into her bows, if she had kept her place. She slipped to leeward of the Montagne, into the very position which the Queen Charlotte meant to occupy. The master of Howe's ship succeeded in placing her so as to ply both her broadsides with great effect on the two French vessels. The close firing between the Queen Charlotte and her two opponents began at a little after nine o'clock, and at nearly the same time the action became general along the line.

Unfortunately, only five of Howe's ships followed the example which he had so bravely given of forcing their way through the enemy's line and engaging to leeward. The rest of our fleet, to the infinite mortification of Howe, engaged their respective adversaries to windward, thus allowing the French, when beaten, to go off before the wind. But, notwithstanding the failures in the British manœuvre, a decisive victory was obtained. After fighting manfully for about an hour, the French Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse gave way, and stood off to the northward, and was followed by all the ships in his van that could carry sail. He left ten of his ships, almost all of them totally dismasted, and nearly surrounded by the English. But the uninjured state of some of the French ships, which still continued the engagement, and the dispersed and crippled condition of a part of the British squadron, (among others Lord Howe's own ship,) enabled many of the French to escape, though the only canvass three of them could spread was a small sail raised on the stump of the foremast. The retreat of these ships was covered by Villaret-Joyeuse, who, having lain to leeward and repaired his damages, brought up eleven or twelve of his ships, which had lost none of their masts, to the succour of his dismasted ones. Seven, however, of the French line-of-battle-ships were abandoned to their fate. Six of these were taken possession of by the English; but the Vengeur had received too many shots between wind and

water to remain a prize. She filled, and went down in deep water almost as soon as the English flag was hoisted on her. After securing his six other prizes, and giving assistance to the most shattered of his own ships, Lord Howe made the signal for the fleet to close round him. This was done with the intention of again attacking Villaret-Joyeuse. The French Admiral, however, aimed at nothing but securing his own retreat: he collected his nineteen sail-of-the-line, and made away for the coast of Brittany.

Some of our naval writers have censured Lord Howe's victory as incomplete, and have compared it with the utter destruction which Nelson used to inflict on an enemy. But it must be remembered that Howe had not such captains to back him up as Nelson had. If Howe's orders had been obeyed, in all probability not a French ship would have escaped; for though the Republican seamen showed great courage, they could not stand the fighting at close quarters. We should remember that the English navy, at the commencement of the war, was not what St. Vincent and Nelson gradually made it. There is an excellent work by Captain La Graviere,' a French officer, (now serving in the Indian Seas,) in which the progressive improvement of the English navy and the progressive deterioration of the French, as the war went on, are admirably pointed out and explained. In truth, Lord Howe's victory, coming at the very beginning of hostilities, was of incalculable importance. It gave our sailors the enthusiasm and confidence of success; and it went far in giving the youth of Republican France a dislike for the sea-service; which, if they had won the first battle, might have become popular, and might have produced almost as many distinguished leaders among them as their revolutionary army did.

Lord Howe was received in England after his victory with merited honour. He was now seventy years of age, and his robust constitution, which had been so long and so severely tried, at last began to fail. He lived, however, to do his country good service in winning back, by judicious kindness, many of our seamen to their duty in the time of the mutinies at the Nore and Spithead. He died of gout, which he had driven to his head by trying to cure it by electricity, on the 5th of August, 1799. (Barrow's Life of Howe.-James's Naval History.)

5 Translated by Captain Plunkett.