Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: theatre, it revealed to the British admiral a great opportunity. The weather division of the Spanish fleet, twenty-one gigantic ships, resembled nothing so much as a confused and swaying forest of masts; the leeward Spanish Windward Division nh.A.M. Spanish Lee Division British THE BATTLE OFF CAPE ST.VINCENT. Cutting: the Spanish Line. "on, AUm "Kittles ol British Navy." division—six ships in a cluster, almost as confused— was parted by an interval of nearly threo miles from the main body of the fleet, and into that fatal gap, as with the swift and deadly thrust of a rapier, Jervis drove his fleet in one unswerving line, the two columnsmelting into 0n0, ship following hard 0n ship. The Spaniards strove furiously to close their line, the twenty- one huge ships bearing down from the windward, the smaller squadron clawing desperately up from the leeward. But the British fleet—a long line of gliding pyramids of sails, leaning over to the pressure of .the wind, with " the meteor flag" flying from the peak of each vessel, and the curving lines of guns awaiting grim and silent beneath—was too swift. As it swept through the gap, the Spanish vice-admiral, in tho Prineipe de Asturias, a great three-decker of 112 guns, tried the daring feat of breaking through the British line to join the severed squadron. He struck the English fleet almost exactly at the flagship, the Victory. The Victory was thrown into stays to meet her, the Spaniard swung round in response, and, exactly as her quarter was exposed to tho broadside of the Victory, tho thunder of a tremendous broadside rolled from that ship. The unfortunate Spaniard was s:T1ittcn as with a tempest of iron, and the next moment, with sails torn, topmasts hanging to leeward, ropes hanging loose in every direction, and h...