Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall sp1.djvu/458

  from that side. The west side, where breakers run into the sea, affords the only landing, and that not at all times practicable. Even when a person reaches the shore, he must creep on his hands and feet, through crannies and over dangerous steeps, till he gains the N.W. side, where the eye is suddenly relieved by a slope of green fig-trees, overhung by an immense grotto. To place a battery on the top of this rock would, at first sight, appear impossible; but Commodore Hood, intent on annoying the enemy, and convinced of its practicability, lost no time in making the attempt, which was beheld by the French, at Martinique, first with contempt, and afterwards with astonishment.

On the 8th Jan. 1804, the Centaur was anchored close to the south side of the rock, and a party of men, principally mechanics, landed under the orders of Lieutenant Maurice, who, with his accustomed zeal, had volunteered to direct their operations. The works were carried on with so much rapidity, that on the 18th of the same month a royal salute was fired in honor of Queen Charlotte’s birth-day, from three 24-pounders, one mounted on a traversing carriage close to the water, another upon the N.E. side, and the third rather less than half-way from the base to the top of the rock, The most arduous and important task was to get two long 18-pounders to the summit, where a platform was made by blowing away the forked pieces of granite that crowned it, and holes drilled through the rock to receive the breechings, and thereby prevent the guns from going over the precipice when fired. To such an officer as Commodore Hood no difficulty was insurmountable. The method adopted by him on this occasion was characteristic and ingenious, consequently deserving of particular notice.

Lieutenant Maurice having succeeded in scrambling up the side of the rock (rarely, perhaps never before, trodden by man), and fastened one end of an 8-inch hawser to a pinnacle, the viol-block was converted into a traveller, with a purchase-block lashed thereto, and the other end of the hawser set up, as a jack-stay, round the Centaur’s main-mast. The gun being slung to the viol, the purchase-fall was brought to the