2-889-354 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The French Squadron in Position, 1850. Warships off Cherbourg in northern France for a naval review. 'The French fleet was under the command of Admiral Parseval-Dechesnes, and had been brought from the Mediterranean for the sole purpose of being reviewed by the President of the Republic. As it lay in the roads, it presented a magnificent sight when viewed from the Quai Napoleon. There were no less than eight first-rate line-of-battle ships moored in two lines...The yachts also, that had guns, fired salutes of twenty-one guns; and amid the thunder of the cannon and the roaring cheers of the crews, caught up from ship to ship, and running for many miles, from the breakwater to the town bridges, and from the eastern side to the dockyard shores...the lightning flashes of nearly 2000 pieces of ordnance crashed forth with a tremendous roar...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.