French ship Soleil-Royal (1692) French ship Soleil-Royal (1692) The Soleil Royal ("Regal Sun") was a First Rank ship of the line of the French Royal Navy. This ship was originally planned to be a 2nd Rank two-decker to be built at Brest, but - following the loss of fifteen major French warships by Anglo-Dutch attacks at Cherbourg and La Hogue during the first few days of June, 1692 (N.S.) - she was ordered in the same week to be built instead as a First Rank three-decker of 104 guns. On 21 June she was given the name "Foudroyant" to replace the previous ship bearing
The empire on which the sun never sets Empire". From the mid-nineteenth century, the image of the sun never setting can be found applied to Anglophone culture, explicitly including both the British Empire and the United States, for example in a speech by Alexander Campbell in 1852: "To Britain and America God has granted the possession of the new world; and because the sun never sets upon our religion, our language and our arts...". By the end of the century, the phrase was also being applied to the United States alone. An 1897 magazine article titled "The Greatest Nation on Earth" boasted, "[T]he sun never sets on Uncle