ADMIRAL BRODERICK’S SHIP BURNT.

On the twenty-ninth day of May, the Raisonable, a French ship of the line, mounted with sixty-four cannon, having on board six hundred and thirty men, commanded by the prince de Mombazon, chevalier de Rohan, was, in her passage from Port l’Orient to Brest, attacked by captain Dennis, in the Dorsetshire, of seventy guns, and taken after an obstinate engagement, in which one hundred and sixty men of the prince’s complement were killed or wounded, and he sustained great damage in his hull, sails, and rigging. These successes were, moreover, chequered by the tidings of a lamentable disaster that befel the ship Prince George, of eighty guns, commanded by rear-admiral Broderick, in his passage to the Mediterranean. On the thirteenth day of April, between one and two in the afternoon, a dreadful fire broke out in the fore part of the ship, and raged with such fury, that notwithstanding all the efforts of the officers and men for several hours, the flames increased, and the ship being consumed to the water’s edge, the remnant sunk about six o’clock in the evening. The horror and consternation of such a scene are not easily described. When all endeavours proved fruitless, and no hope of preserving the ship remained, the barge was hoisted out for the preservation of the admiral, who entered it accordingly; but all distinction of persons being now abolished, the seamen rushed into it in such crowds, that in a few moments it overset. The admiral, foreseeing that this would be the case, stripped off his clothes, and committing himself to the mercy of the waves, was saved by the boat of a merchant ship, after he had sustained himself in the sea a full hour by swimming. Captain Payton, who was the second in command, remained upon the quarter-deck as long as it was possible to keep that station, and then descending by the stern ladder, had the good fortune to be taken into a boat belonging to the Aklerney sloop. The hull of the ship, masts, and rigging, were now in a blaze, bursting tremendously in several parts through horrid clouds of smoke; nothing was heard but the crackling of the flames, mingled with the dismal cries of terror and distraction; nothing was seen but acts of frenzy and desperation. The miserable wretches, affrighted at the horrors of such a conflagration, sought a fate less dreadful by plunging into the sea, and about three hundred men were preserved by the boats belonging to some ships that accompanied the admiral in his voyage, but five hundred perished in the ocean.