Service
Under the command of John Bazely, she took part in the Battle of Hyères Islands in 1795. Blenheim then fought at the Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1797. By 1801, she had become so badly hogged as to be unsafe for sea. However, she was razeed to a 74 in 1801–1802, and set sail for Barbados under the command of Captain Peter Bover at the end of the year, carrying Captain Samuel Hood and other commissioners to Trinidad. Captain Bland sailed her back to Portsmouth in 1804.
In 1805, Blenheim sailed for Madras under the command of Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Troubridge, Bt, flag captain Austin Bissell. By the time Troubridge received orders to take command at the Cape of Good Hope, at the beginning of 1807, Blenheim was in alarming condition, and required constant pumping to keep her afloat. Despite the request of the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies, Edward Pellew, that he transfer his flag to another ship, Troubridge determined to take her to the Cape. Bissell also warned Troubridge of Blenheim's condition, but received in return the taunt that he might go ashore if he liked. Unable to shake Troubridge's confidence, Bissell composed a last letter to his wife before sailing, convinced the ship would founder.
Read more about this topic: HMS Blenheim (1761)
Famous quotes containing the word service:
“Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.”
—Peregrine, Sir Worsthorne (b. 1923)