ablative of time

[antianira]

I am still having a very hard time translating english to latin. I seems to take forever just to do one senence. Anyways here is my current exercise:

In the first hour of the night the ship was overcome by the billows.


I haven't checked the key yet (I am studying on my own and its getting to be a bad habit) So I'd like to run through what I've come up with so far:

the ship is the subject, so I'm guessing it should be first, in the single, nom form : Navis

"in the first hour of the night"
Night should be genetive (the first hour belongs to it), in the third declension, this gives us noctis

in the first hour - this is my ablative of time (that is my current chapter, so I know something is an ablative of time)
hour in the ablative is hora ? (female, 1st declension?)
Does first need to agree with hour? hora prima ? I'm getting a bit lost with what need to agree with what.
Do I need a preposition with abl. of time? in ?

"by the billows" this is also ablative, plural (ablative of means, which has no prep) giving me: fluctibus

"was overcome" this is passive, correct? perfect passive definate (since it happened at exactly 'the first hour of the night') this gives me : superatus est

So Regis, for $100K, my final answer is:

Navis in noctis hora prima fluctibus superatus est.


Am I close?

[Lucus Eques]

Salue, Antianira!
Yes, you are close.

in is not necessary with the ablative of time. Simply hōrā prīmā would do.

You are right in indicating that superatus est means "was overcome." superatus, however is a past participle, an adjective, and must agree with the subject of the verb est. Since navis is feminine, the phrase "the ship was overcome" must be rendered as navis superata est.

Much like English, the Latin subject does not always have to come first in the sentence, and a nice time expression like hora prima noctis, or better yet hora noctis prima, or almost any combination, could begin the sentence:

Hora noctis prima navis fluctibus superata est.

[antianira]

thanks I had forgotten about that past participle agreement, and I just did that chapter a few weeks ago. Its hard to keep track of all the different pieces, it's a lot o work to put together one sentence. i found writing the whole process out (as in the first post) seems to help me remember things, but it takes forever.