Who is this daredevil? (3 photos)

Remember in the old computer toy QuakeWorld there was such a mode "capture the flag" from the enemy base. Something similar was done by one brave Frenchman in the naval battle at Cape Lizard, October 21, 1707. That day French squadron of twelve ships under the command of Admirals de Forben and Duguet-Truen were taken by surprise by an important English convoy of a hundred ships bound for Lisbon.





All five escort warships commanded by Commodore Richard Edwards, were forced to lower their flags, as were 15 others merchant ships, and the rest of the convoy was scattered.

During the battle, Duguet-Truen's ship, a 72-gun "

Le Lys

"(Fr. Lily)

attacked the 80-gun English flagship "

HMS Cumberland

", which he captured with the help of a frigate"

Gloire

"(French Glory) under the command of Captain de la Jaye.



It was this fragment of the battle that he depicted in 1827 on his canvas artist Louis-Philippe Crepin. In the picture on the left, feed "Lilies", and on the right "

Cumberland"

. Two ships have converged side to side and fire at each other when in duel intervenes "Glory", whose figurehead can be seen on the very the left edge of the canvas.



"Lily

» mistakenly depicted as a three-deck ship, although it was only two-deck. "Cumberland" really was three-deck ship, with a hull length of 47.5 m, a width of 12.8 m, and a total draft of 5.5 m. So that you do not guess where the hero of our story is, I he was immediately marked with a circle. Here he is, jumping from a high stern "Cumberland", 15 meters, no less), and next to it the stern falls flag of the enemy ship.

The story of this man's feat is told in many works, for example, in Felix de Beaune's History of Duguet-Trouin:

“The bowsprit of the Englishman, having torn Lilia’s shrouds, making practically impossible general boarding. However, a few fearless men made it to his deck alone. The first to jump on deck "Cumberland", was the foreman Honorat Tuscany (contre-maître Honorat Tuscan). He immediately rushed to the stern flag to lower it. And so, when the foreman was cutting the halyard with a knife, he saw that four English Marines suddenly jumped out like the devil out of a snuffbox and rushed at him with raised cleavers.

At the moment of imminent danger, the brave foreman had enough presence of mind to throw the English flag into the sea, and then rush into water and yourself. He was able to catch the flag in the water, and climb into the boat, being towed by the Cumberland. Then the daredevil Tuscany cut the line and, using the sail he found on this boat, get away from danger and get closer to the lee side of the Achilles, where he and took…

The unprecedented feat of Honorat Tuscany was not forgotten, and Duguet-Trouin reported about it in his report to the Naval Ministry. This flag is gloriously kidnapped by a fearless sailor from an English ship, was delivered to Notre Dame Cathedral, and Louis XIV, who in in principle, he was not interested in the exploits of his most insignificant subjects, and never expressed his satisfaction by any mercy on such occasions, ordered Honorat Tuscan to be promoted to boatswain, and also awarded his gold medal.

This medal had Virtuti nauticae praemia data as its epigraph (award for naval courage) and represented the king in the form of Neptune, sitting with a trident in his hand at the prow of a ship going in the middle of the sea and who bestows a medal on a sailor in an ancient costume, who receives it on knees...

Five years later, in 1712, the same Honoret Tuscan, already a boatswain on the ship "Castle" under the command of the Chevalier de Fougeres, was captured in South Seas. The English team, informed that it was this brave the sailor performed an unprecedented feat of arms, which I described above, subjected him to a thousand unworthy appeals.