" Vive le Roi," " Vive l'Empereur," " Vive la Republique," "Vive Thiers," " Vive M Mahon," vive-what  will be the next vive of la Grande Nation? The associations, historical and social, connected with these cries, caused great perplexity in my mind while looking at the iron-coated monster, now lying in the marine hospital at Biloela. I thought, too, of gay, brilliant, frivolous, vivacious Paris of some five years ago, and then of stern, sacrificing, heroic, besieged Paris of a later period... As the Atalanta lay solidly, I may say solemnly, on her rests in the Fitzroy Dock, she reminded me of the great creative power of Napoleon, the unfortunate, who seems to have raised his beloved France to too enviable a military eminence—to a height which first generated European distrust, and finally led to her recent humiliation. The great war ship, though proudly flying the tricolour, and beautiful in her strength, inspires me with a feeling of sadness as the Imperial prestige is gone; the splendid vessel is not therefore, a type or symbol of concentrated sovereign power. It suggests nothing about the Republic of a hopeful rosy hued kind. One thinks while looking at it of the sombre, dark, often-suffering man, whose busy brain brought her and many others of her class into existence, and who had such vain trust in his mighty fleet. [Beaufoy Merlin, “The French Ironclad, Atalanta”, Australian Town and Country Journal, Saturday 23 August 1873 p 17]