By Frederick C. Leiner
December 2022 Naval History Magazine
[USNI] In naval historical fiction set during the Age of Sail, the difficulties of identifying ships at sea are typically nonexistent or glossed over. For instance, in C. S. Forester’s brilliant novel Ship of the Line, one of the critical events in the life of Captain Horatio Hornblower results from the identification of a ship and her signals. In the autumn of 1810, Hornblower’s 74-gun ship-of-the-line Sutherland is patrolling Rosas Bay, off the southern coast of Spain, when the masthead lookout spots a sail, “right in the wind’s eye, sir, an’ comin’ up fast.” Coming from the direction of the wind, the stranger’s pennant and any signal flags would be streaming directly at the Sutherland. The lookout soon identifies the ship as a frigate, and “British by the look of her.”
Perched on the masthead, 80 or 100 feet above the main deck, and equipped with a spyglass, with the horizon perhaps 20 miles off, a lookout might be able to discern a larger warship-like frigate perhaps as far as 15 miles distant, if the weather were clear and sea conditions allowed.1 Forester, however, refers to “stormy waters” and a “grey sky,” what William Bush, the Sutherland’s first lieutenant, calls “blowing” weather, which surely would limit the view. Sometime later—Forester does not indicate how far off the oncoming ship is or how much time has elapsed—with the ship’s topsails in sight, “white against the grey sky,” Stebbings, a sailor at a carronade near Hornblower, identifies the approaching ship as the Cassandra, a 32-gun frigate. Stebbings has no spyglass nor even a vantage point, but he is proven right, even though had the Cassandra been hull down, she still presumably would have been several miles away. The Cassandra signals that a French squadron, which the Sutherland cannot see, trails far behind her.
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