Ramillies

Posted by Brian Stephens on Thursday 10th of April 2014 13:15

Edinburgh Advertiser, May 23, 1780
Extract of a letter from an officer on board the Ramilli, man of war, to his father in Edinburgh, dated Hamoaze, Plymouth, May 12.
Our squadron has been very unlucky in waiting for winds, and our ship in particular most unfortunate. We lay at Torbay till the 8th inst. when our ship was ordered round to Plymouth. We weighed the 8th at midnight and turned down. On the 9th the wind coming to blow very hard at S.S.W. we could not clear the land on either tack; we accordingly were obliged to run in, it blowing then a very hard gale. The gale still increasing, a very heavy sea breaking over us, at about one o'clock the 9th inst, A.M. the Biensaisant, having parted one of her cables, drove and kept firing guns of distress. At about three quarters past one A.M. we parted our best bower and drove. We the let go our fleet anchor, but to no effect. Still driving inwards towards the rocks, still we drove foul of the Biensaisant, and carried away her head and bowsprit with our quarter. She immediately cut away all her masts, which luckily fell clear of us and the sea hove us clear of her; but to our great mortification, found our ship strike very heavy abast.







We the cut away all our masts, which went over the side, tearing everything before them with a crash too horrible to anyone who was not an eye witness to conceive. There we lay for two hours and a half expecting every thump she took would send her in pieces. and there was nothing but death and destruction before us; in the mean time we were deployed at the pumps and staving all thhe casks in the hold. At 4 o'clock A.M. the flood tide began to make, and the gale rather abating we brought to our fleet cable, and hove her som fathoms off, and it rather eased her thumping and as the tide made she got afloat, and the gale decreasing, we got assistance from the yard. It was very lucky for us it was dead low water when we went on, stern foremost; had she gone on broadside to it, she would have upset and gone to pieces instantly and not a sole could have been saved as it is all high sharpe rocks, with breakers as high as the mast head. She makes so much water that we can just keep her free making upwards of six foot an hour. She is now a mere wreck, and will need a very great repair. We have got her this morning warped into Hamoaze, and will proceed to clear her for docking. It is conjectured, as she will be so long in repairing, that we will be turned over to another ship, but we are not certain. What is very lucky, there was not a man hurt, but we are all much fatigued.