A NEW FRENCH WARSHIP.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5460, 11 January 1896, Page 8

A NEW FRENCH WARSHIP.

Eeoently the Dv Chayla, a fast French frigate, on the new model, was launched at Cherbourg. Dv Blanquet Chayla, after whom it is called, was known in his time (says a Paris correspondent) as a wet blanket in the squadrons of Nelson. He entered the French Eoyal Navy in 1775 at the age of sixteen, was in the Dr Grasse Squadron sent to co-operate with the Americans against, King George, was under Bailli Suffren in scouring the Indian Seas, and between the above date and the battle of the Nile, received seventeen wounds in fights with the English. He rose under the Beptiblie to the grade of rear-admiral, and as such, commanded a division in Aboulrir Bay. He opposed Admiral de Bureys in a Council held before Nelson took the offensive, but had to execute his orders, and asked leave to run up his flag in the vessel that would have to bear, as he thought, the brunt of the attack. The tactics of the British leader were not anticipated by him. Nevertheless, Blanquet dv Chayla's post was a post of danger. At the opening of the action he received a discharge of canister shot in the face, and was for ever after fearfully disfigured, but did not retire for many years. The name of the Dv Chayla is given, said the Port Admiral at the ceremony, to keep alive in the French Navy the memory of the hero of so many fights.