“The Temeraire, second-rate, ninety-eight guns, was begun at Chatham, July, 1793, and launched on the 11th September, 1798.  She was named after an older Temeraire taken by Admiral Boscawen from the French in 1759, and sold in June, 1784.  The Chatham Temeraire was fitted at Plymouth for a prison ship in 1812, and in 1819 she became a receiving ship and was sent to Sheerness.  She was sold on the 16th August, 1838, to Mr. J. Beatson for L5,530.  The Temeraire was at the Battle of Trafalgar on the 21st October, 1805.  She was next to the Victory, and followed Nelson into action; commanded by Captain Elias Harvey, with Thomas Kennedy as first lieutenant.  Her maintopmast, the head of her mizzenmast, her foreyard, her starboard, cathead and bumpkin, and her fore and main topsail yards were shot away; her fore and main masts so wounded as to render them unfit to carry sail, and her bowsprit shot through in several places.  Her rigging of every sort was cut to pieces; the head of her rudder was taken off by the fire of the Redoutable; eight feet of the starboard side of the lower deck abreast of the mainmast were stove in, and the whole of her quarter-galleries on both sides carried away.  Forty-six men on board of her were killed, and seventy-six wounded....  The Temeraire was built with a beakhead, or, in other words, her upper works were cut off across the catheads; a peculiarity which can be observed in Turner’s picture.  It was found by experience in the early part of the French war that this mode of construction exposed the men working the guns to the enemy’s fire, and it was afterwards abandoned.  It has been objected,” adds Mr. White, “that the masts and yards in the picture are too light for a ninety-eight gun ship; but the truth is that when the vessel was sold she was juryrigged as a receiving ship, and Turner, therefore, was strictly accurate.  He might have seemed more accurate by putting heavier masts and yards in her; but he painted her as he saw her.  This is very important, as it gets rid of the difficulty which I myself have felt and expressed, that it was very improbable that she was sold all standing in sea-going trim, as I imagined Turner intended us to believe she was sold, and answers also the criticism just mentioned as to the disproportion between the weight of the masts and yards and the size of the hull.”  Part of the Temeraire, Mr. White tells me, is still in existence.  Messrs. Castle, the shipbuilders of Millbank, have the two figures of Atlas which supported the sterngallery.

SPRING

(BOTTICELLI)

MARCEL REYMOND