Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 4.djvu/383

 THE 17TH OF OCTOBER. 353 These results the French fleet achieved ; but c ii A p. M'hilst sustaining, as it did, heavy damage, and _! '_ losing in killed and wounded 200 men, it had an ^^"urofthe opportunity of proving the skill, the coolness, the undelukc-n resource with which conflagrations and havoc of French all kinds can be dealt with in battle by seamen. ^®^*' It displayed too that exalted kind of courage which, without being lieated by the raj)ture of strife at close quarters, can yet make men stead- fast in fight whilst their comrades from time to time are falling, some mangled, some slain, by an enemy ensconced behind ramparts.* If the French seamen were exposed, and fruit- the cause oi its failure lessly exposed, to a trial of this kind, it was apparently because they endeavoured to operate against land fortifications at a range which, for such a purpose, was fatally long. It would seem that they must have been acting under some misconception of the distance at which a fleet undertaking to assail land defences can most ad- vantageously operate ; for, so far as concerns depth of water, there was nothing to hinder the ships from coming to close quarters with the fort. The works which the in-shore squadron under- works to -^ be assailed took to enp-aoe were three : — ^y *-iie ° ° in-shore At a bend of the coast north-east of Cape Con- English ■"■ squadron. stantine, there stood that small fastness which the The wasp. English surnamcd the 'Wasp.' Overliaiiging the Turk.s acting with them) seems to have been 203. VOL. IV. Z
 * The los.s of the French fleet alone (without including the