3-017-176 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The British Channel Squadron entering Cherbourg Harbour, [northern France], 1865. View '...from a sketch by our special artist...The first to round the point was the Royal yacht Osborne, while, at the same moment, a salute was fired by the guns of the fort. Immediately afterwards followed the Admiralty yacht Enchantress, and then, slowly wheeling round, came the Edgar, with her lofty masts, her sides and poop towering far out of the water, and the two broad white stripes which mark her tiers of guns broken at intervals by the portholes through which peeped the cannon, ready to return the compliment she was about to receive. As she passed the end of the breakwater the Magenta fired a salute of eleven guns, which was immediately returned by the English Admiral's ship with one of nineteen guns...The low, broad, ungainly vessel with the circular turrets on her deck, which comes behind the flagship, is the Royal Sovereign...The other ironclads, following each other at quarter-mile distance, are shown to the left hand. The Enchantress is near the right-hand corner, with a French Government steamer beyond. At the extreme left corner, in the fore part of the view, is a steamer with a party of excursionists, her rigging gaily decked with many flags'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.