government, and several additional ships were purchased into the service. To one of those, the Glatton, of 56 guns and 319 men[1], which had been built for the India service, Captain Trollope was appointed. During the winter of that year, and the spring of 1796> he was employed, under the orders of Admiral Duncan, in the North Sea. On the 14th July, in the latter year, he sailed from Yarmouth Roads for the purpose of joining Captain (now Admiral) Savage and his squadron, cruising off the port of Helvoetsluys. On the succeeding day, about two P.M., the Glatton made the land, and at the same time descried five ships of war and a cutter, which her commander conjectured to be British; but the distance, aided by the sudden fall of the wind, would not admit of an immediate communication by signals. In the course of the afternoon a breeze sprang up; and at six o’clock the discovery was made, that the flags hoisted by the vessels, which had now all anchored, were not English. Immediately the Glatton bore up towards the strangers; who thereupon weighed, and, as they dropped out in a line, were seen to consist of three large frigates, two smaller ones, and a cutter; besides another frigate and a large brig, about to join them from to-leeward.
Nothing daunted at so formidable a force, but merely considering the occasion as affording a fair opportunity of trying the effect of the Glatton’s heavy carronades, Captain Trollope pushed on, and selected as his opponent the third ship from the van, she appearing, from her superior size, to be the Commodore. At a little before ten, just as the Glatton had got close upon the French ship’s larboard quarter, and was ranging up a-breast of her, the latter’s second a-head tacked, and placed herself close upon the Glatton’s larboard bow. All three ships immediately opened their fire; and a tremendous crash it was, the Glatton discharging her enormous shot from both sides, with direful effect, into her two opponents, neither of whom was much above twenty yards from her. Meanwhile the two frigates a-stern of the Commodore, kept
- ↑ The Glatton’s armament consisted of twenty-eight 68, and the same number of 32-pounders, all carronades, of which species of ordnance Captain Trollope appears to have been among the earliest patrons. (See James’s Naval History, v. 1, pp. 66. 418.)
