Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/492

 482

NOTES AND QUERIES. [i is. XL JUNE 19, 1915.

no less an authority than Sir William St. John Hope, himself an Esquire of the present revived Order, writes : " It is a matter for regret that when the Order was last revived the badge adopted was the so-called Maltese cross instead of the graceful cross flory." THOS. M. BLAGG. 124, Chancery Lane, W.C.

FLOATING IRONCLAD BATTERIES (11 S. xi. 430). There is an engraving of the floating battery Glatton, " from a photograph by T. Scott Archer," in The Illustrated London News for 29 Sept., 1855 (vol. xxvii. p. 373).

From the letterpress accompanying the illustration I take the following :

" The inapplicability of our large ships of war for the attack of the Russian stone fortresses and strongly fortified harbours has led to the construction of a large number of floating bat- teries, some forty in number, which are very shortly to be launched against our powerful enemy. These vessels are built from one model, and are pierced for ten or twelve guns ; except two batteries, the Glatton and the Trusty, which are pierced for sixteen guns. We have engraved the Giatton, built by Messrs. Green, already afloat, and which, by the latest news, reached Gibraltar on the 10th inst., on her way to the Black Sea."

The dimensions of the floating batteries are given as follows : Length between the perpendiculars, 172 ft. 6 in. ; breadth, extreme, 43 ft. 8 in. ; depth in hold, 14 ft. 7 in. ; draught, 7 ft. 9 in. ; tonnage, 1,469 tons.

"The two decks (the lower one to be the fighting deck) are of 9-in. oak, resting on lOj-in. by lO^-in. beams, placed 1 ft. 9 in. apart from centre to centre, and supported in the middle by stancheons of iron hinged at the top, so as to be struck or hung up when in action. The frames, iron plates, and planking of the sides, form a solid mass 2 ft. thick ; the iron plates outside being 4 in. thick, planed on their edges, placed close together, and bolted to the woodwork with 1 J-in. bolts

" The Glatton, Capt. Arthur Gumming, and the Meteor, Capt. F. B. P. Seymour, left Falmouth on the 22nd [August]. We gather from the letter of one of the crew of the Glatton that, on her touching at Brest, some of our officers com- plained to the master shipwright that they could not steer the battery, even when they were towed at 5 knots. The shipwright replied that the French battery Tonnante was alike unmanage- able until two rudders were put, one on each quarter, when she steered perfectly well ....

" The award of persons competent to form an opinion upon the merits of these batteries does not appear to be in their favour."

The opinion of a " well-informed writer " in The Hampshire Advertiser is quoted, and of another critic in The Artizan.

As regards the name "Glatton," the following^explanation is given. In 1795

nine Indiamen were purchased by the' Government for war purposes, one of which was called Glatton by her owner, probably from the place of that name in Huntingdon- shire. On 15 July, 1796, H.M.S. Glatton engaged, single-handed a squadron of French ships with the loss of only two men wounded, the enemy losing seventy in killed and wounded, and a frigate sunk. "It is in memory of this exploit," says a correspondent of ' N. & Q.,' " that the Admiralty have called one of the new floating batteries the- Glatton."

In The Illustrated London News, 10 Nov., 1855, is an account of the bombardment and capture of Kinburn, 16-17 October, with a plan of the attack (p. 554). On this plan three French floating batteries are shown. The account says that on 17 October the- French floating batteries opened a tre- mendous fire at 500 yards upon Kinburn Fort at 9.30 A.M. from twelve large guns- on each broadside.

" The French lost about twenty-seven men,, chiefly in their floating batteries, which acted admirably, and endured still better. One is^ said to have had sixty-seven cannon shots strike her without doing any important damage."

In Chambers's ' Pictorial History of the- Russian War,' p. 439, it is said :

" The smaller vessels were those which effec- tually redueedjJKinburn .... They were stationed nearly south of the fort, the floating batteries- nearest, then the gunboats> and the mortar vessels most distant .... From detailed accounts, it appears that the three French mortar-batteries^ appropriately named the Devastation, Lave,, and Tonnante exhibited qualities well de- serving the attention of all concerned .... From, half -past nine o'clock until noon the-e threa powerful vessels maintained their terrible fire against the chief fort."

F. H. C.

There is a picture in a scrap -book in the Central Reference Library, Bolton (evidently cut out of an illustrated periodical of the* time), of the floating battery Etna on fire at Messrs. Russell & Co.'s works, Millwall. This ship was designed for operations in the Crimean War.

ARCHIBALD SPARKE, F.R.S.L.

MUNDAY SURNAME: DERIVATION (11 S xi. 402). Burke's ' Landed Gentry ' for 1914 does not give the derivation of this; name from theDe Mondaye Abbey. There- fore it was probably as apocryphal as the Norman ancestors discovered for some other families. The true derivation is possibly from some small island, Mund-ey, the Saxon, ey, as in Ey-ton (Eton), Shiplh-ey (Shipley ) Osen-ey, Ousel-ey (Qusely), &G. L. V.