HMS Lion (64), Cptn. William Cornwallis, HMS Bristol (50) and HMS Janus (44) chased by M. de la Motte Piquet, who had four 74 gun ships and two frigates, off Monte Christi, St. Domingo. HMS Success (32), Cptn. Charles Maurice Pole, took Spanish frigate Santa Catalina(34), Don Jacen, off Cape Spartel.She wasset her onfire when other enemy ships closed. On 1st March 1815, Napoleon escaped from the Isle of Elba and returned to Paris, where he overthrew the newly restored King Louis XVIII. Napoleon was finally defeated for good at the Battle of Waterloo on 18th June 1815 and he was permanently exiled to St Helena in mid-Atlantic, where he died in 1821. HMS Scorpion (18), George Hardinge, and HMS Beaver (14), Charles Pelly, cut out Dutchbrig Atalante (16), Cptn. Carp(Killed in Action)from the Vlie passage at the entrance to the Texel. Williamson’s complaint is that the confinement of prisoners together is more likely to lead to more crime, for ‘if every felon [was] kept separate, prisons would then, and not till then, answer the true purpose.’ He believed that had he been punished in some other way, such as being ‘severely whipped,’ he would have gone ‘about his business’ and walked away from a life of crime.

She serves to recall the shameful days, when as a floating Convict prison, she was not inaptly described by a Colonial writer, as an ‘Ocean Hell.’ Lion was a 64-gun Third-rate launched in 1777. She was used as a sheer hulk from 1816 and was sold for breaking up in 1837. Both are the most capable and powerful surface warships ever built for the Royal Navy and will be the nation’s flagships for the next 50 years. This novel of the Royal Navy in peacetime, something of a tragicomedy, was written by ex-Navy officer John Winton and was published in 1967. It is set in a time where Great Britain might still be able - just about - to call herself a world power with genuinely global reach, but the last of Empire is ebbing fast. The British government, perhaps in a fit of hubris, has commissioned the largest warship ever built for the Royal Navy - the truly massive aircraft carrier HMS Leviathan. With nearly two thousand crewmen aboard, it is almost a floating city, or at least a small town with its own airport. The snag is, it is so Herculanean a prospect that its first shakedown cruise proved to be a humiliating failure marked by disasters and ill-feeling. It may be too much for one Captain to completely administer and call his own, a massive white elephant that nobody can make work.

The Combined Fleet was sailing in a ragged line about five miles long, the two British columns heading towards them from seaward about two miles apart. HMS Royal Sovereign engaged the enemy first, being freshly refitted, she had been re-coppered and her clean bottom had allowed her to surge ahead of her column. As she passed astern of the giant Spanish ship Santa Anna (112), she fired a double-shotted broadside through the Spaniard's open and unprotected stern, which Spanish officers were to admit after the battle, had killed and wounded 400 of her crew. On passing the Santa Anna's stern, Collingwood remarked to his Flag-Captain, Captain Edward Rotheram " Rotheram, what would Nelson give to be here today?". At the same time, aboard HMS Victory, Nelson, on seeing HMS Royal Sovereign engage the enemy so far aheard of the rest of her column, turned to Captain Hardy stating " See how that noble fellow Collingwood carries his ship into action?". Transcript: HMS LEVIATHAN - January 1917 to December 1918, North America & West Indies Station, North Atlantic convoys (Part 2 of 2)". Royal Navy Log Books of the World War 1 Era. Naval-History.net . Retrieved 2 March 2014. But what shall I say of hulks! A college of villainy – from whence every man comes out a master of arts; having taken every possible degree of scoundrelism. HMS Essex was originally the USS Essex of the United States Navy, a sailing frigate that participated in the Quasi-War with France, the First Barbary War, and in the War of 1812. The British captured her in 1814 and she then served as HMS Essex until she was sold at public auction in 1837.

Fortitude was a 74-gun Third-rate ship of the line launched in 1780. She served as a prison hulk from 1795 and was broken up in 1820. The leviathan slipped past Round Tower at the gateway to Portsmouth Harbour this afternoon – 24 hours ahead of her older sister HMS Queen Elizabeth leaving. HMS Penguin (16), G. Morris,drove agroundFrench privateer schooner Renommee, Citizen Renaud, onthe bar at Senegal. She was set on fire and destroyed by the ships boats on the 24th.HMS Emerald (36), Cptn James O'Bryen, and armed sloop Fort Diamond, Thomas Forrest, cut out privateer schooner Mozambique (10), Citizen Vallentes, from under the battery at Seron,Martinique Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (Rev.ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8. In charge of the prison hulk would be a captain, who was accompanied by a ‘certain number of inferior officers, with a chaplain and surgeon.’ Also onboard would typically be a hospital. The possibility of defeat would not have entered the minds of the thousands of British sailors in the fleet. As far as they were concerned, they were led by Nelson, the man responsible for the victory at the Second Battle of Cape St Vincent, destroyer of the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile and victor at the First Battle of Copenhagen. They would be thinking of the unimaginable sums of prize money which would be gained by the capture of a significant proportion of the vast enemy fleet arrayed before them. Those who survived the battle, when eventually paid off, would be rich men.

John Morris Thompson, 32, HMS Conqueror, Master’s mate. Quartermaster 1805, wages paid to wife Mary, 1807, Plymouth,Charles Hopkins, 24, Ord Seaman, HMS Conqueror from Salvador, Sirius, “prest”. was at Trafalgar, discharged to Cadiz hospital 26 Oct 1805 HMS Rosario (10), Booty Harvey,and HMS Griffon (16), George Trollope, destroyed 5 French brigs off Dieppe.