VICTORY SYMBOL

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 63, Issue 4491, 17 October 1941, Page 5

VICTORY SYMBOL

“V” IN NAVAL HISTORY. The letter V has an enviable record in British naval history, according to a correspondent of “The Times,” London. In four of the six great sea battles of the wars of the French Revolution and Empire the name of the flagship of the English Commander-in-Chief had the initial letter V—namely at St. Vincent and at Trafalgar, the Victory; at Camperdown, the Venerable; and at the Nile, the Vanguard. Also in the great military blockades of the French naval bases, maintained from 1803-05 by Nelson off Toulon, and by Cornwallis off Brest, the flagships were the Victory and the Ville de Paris. When Britain’s enemies tried to use the charm its action was reversed. Cornwallis’s Ville de Paris was a new ship, commemorating the capture of De Grasso’s flagship of that name by Rodney in his victory of April 12, 1782. At Camperdown, too, the enemy commander-in-chief had a V flagship, the Vryheid, and like De Grasse he was captured, ship and admiral. In the last two and a half centuries Britain has suffered reverses at sea on four important occasions: off Beachy Head in 1690; off, Toulon in 1744; off Minorca in 1756; and off the Chesapeake in 1781. On none of these occasions was there a V ship in the English line.