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LESSON 14
TOLL for the brave,
The brave that are no more!
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast
by their native shore.
Eight hundred of the brave,
Whose courage well was tried,
Had made the vessel heel,
And laid her on her side.
A land-breeze shook the shrouds,
And she was overset;
Down went the “Royal George ”
With all her crew complete.
Toll for the brave!
Brave Kempenfelt is gone;
His last sea-flght is fought,
His work of glory done.
It was not in the battle;
No tempest gave the shock;
She sprang no fatal leak,
She ran upon no rock.
His sword was in its sheath,
His flngers held the pen,
When Kempenfelt went down
With twice four hundred men.
Weigh the vessel up,
Once dreaded by our foes!
And mingle with our cup
The tear that England owes.
Her timbers yet are sound,
And she may float again,
Full charged with England’s thunder,
And plough the distant main.
But Kempenfelt is gone,
His victories are o’er;
And he and his eight hundred
Shall plough the wave no more.
— COWPER
cour´-age Kem´-pen-felt´ tim´-bers dis´-tant
com-plete´ dread´-ed thun´-der vic´-tor-ies
The “Royal George,” a first-rate man-of-war, of one hundred guns, upset and sank while at anchor in the Spithead, by the guns rolling to one side of the vessel, June 28, 1782. In this dreadful catastrophe nearly a thousand persons perished, among whom was Admiral Kempenfelt, who was writing in his cabin at the time.
By the use of the diving-bell this ship was surveyed in May 1817, as she lay embedded in the deep; and since that time several successive gunpowder explosions have brought up numerous portions of the wreck.