The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford

I. To the Antipodes

After a brief spell in the royal yacht, I was promoted out of her to lieutenant, and was appointed to the Galatea, Captain H.R.H. Alfred Ernest Albert, Duke of Edinburgh, K.G., K.T.

H.M.S. Galatea had four months previously returned from the long cruise of seventeen months, 24th January, 1867, to 26th June, 1868, during which the Duke visited South Africa and Australasia. While he was in Australia, an attempt had been made to assassinate his Royal Highness, who had a very narrow escape. The pistol was fired at the range of a few feet, and the bullet, entering the Duke's back, struck a rib and ran round the bone, inflicting a superficial wound. A full account of the voyage is contained in The Cruise of H.M.S. Galatea, by the Rev. John Milner and Oswald W. Brierley (London, 1869; W. H. Allen). The Galatea frigate was built at Woolwich and launched in 1859. She was of 3227 tons burthen, 800 h.p.; she was pierced for 26 guns; maindeck, 18 guns, 10-inch, 86 cwt., and 4 guns, 10-inch, 6½ tons; on the quarterdeck, 2 guns, rifled, 64-pounders; in the forecastle, 2 guns, rifled, 64-pounders. The 6½-ton guns threw a shot of 115 lb., and a large double-shell weighing 156 lb. She stowed 700 tons of coal and 72 tons of water. Previously the Galatea, commanded by Captain Rochfort Maguire, had been employed from 1862 to 1866 in the Baltic, and on the Mediterranean and West Indian stations. She {74} took part in the suppression of the insurrection at Jamaica, and, after the loss of H.M.S. Bulldog, destroyed the batteries on Cape Haitien. Her sister ship was the Ariadne, and Admiral Penrose Fitzgerald, who served in the Ariadne, in 1861, writes: "It would not be too much to say that she and her sister ship, the Galatea, were the two finest wooden frigates ever built in this or any other country" (Memories of the Sea). Personally, I am inclined to consider, that fine sailor as the Galatea was, the Sutlej was finer still.