Identifier: seanpowerinf00maha (find matches)
Title: The influence of sea power upon history, 1660-1783
Year: 1890 (1890s)
Authors: Mahan, A. T. (Alfred Thayer), 1840-1914
Subjects: Naval history Sea-power
Publisher: Boston : Little, Brown and Company
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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complish that result asSuffren. We shall find him enduring severer tests, and alwaysequal to them. In the afternoon of the 5th of July Suffrens squadron came insight of the English, ancliored off Cuddalore. An hour later,a sudden squall carried away the main and mizzen topmasts ofone of the French ships. Admiral Hughes got under way, andthe two fleets manoeuvred during the night. The followingday the wind favored tlie English, and the opponents foundthemselves in line of battle on the starboard tack, headingsouth-southeast, with the wind at southwest. The disabledFrench ship having by unpardonable inactivity failed to re-pair her injuries, the numbers about to engage were equal, —eleven on each side. At eleven a. m. the English bore down to-gether and engaged ship against ship ; but as was usual underthose conditions, the rear ships did not come to as close ac-tion as those ahead of them (Plate XVI., Position I.). Cap-tain Chevalier carefully points out that their failure was a fair
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SUFFREN AND HUGHES. 447 offset to the failure of the French rear on the 12th of April,^but fails to note in this connection that the French van, bothon that occasion and again on the 3d of September, bungledas well as the rear. There can remain little doubt, in themind of the careful reader, that most of the French captainswere inferior, as seamen, to their opponents. During this i)artof the engagement the fourth ship in the French order, the Brilliant (a), lost her mainmast, bore up out of the line (a),and dropped gradually astern and to leeward (a). At one p. M., when the action was hottest, the wind sud-denly shifted to south-southeast, taking the ships on the portbow (Position II.). Four English ships, the Burford,Sultan (s), Worcester, and Eagle, seeing the breezecoming, kept off to port, toward the French line; the otlierswere taken aback and paid off to starboard. The Frenchships, on the other hand, with two exceptions, the Brilliant(a) and Severe (b), paid off from the English

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