The best of shipwrights, they are no sailors.
And this carries me back to the Reine Blanche, as noble a specimen of what wood and iron can make as ever floated.
She was a new ship: the present her maiden cruise.

The greatest pains having been taken in her construction, she was accounted the "crack" craft in the French navy.

She is one of the heavy sixty-gun frigates now in vogue all over the world, and which we Yankees were the first to introduce.

In action these are the most murderous vessels ever launched.
The model of the Reine Blanche has all that warlike comeliness only to be seen in a fine fighting ship.

Still, there is a good deal of French flummery about her--brass plates and other gewgaws stuck on all over, like baubles on a handsome woman.
Among other things, she carries a stern gallery resting on the uplifted hands of two Caryatides, larger than life.