this situation a dreadful slaughter ensued on board; a shot having struck the hoisting part of the ensign halyard, the colours came slowly down. The Danes perceiving this, and not thinking it the effect of their fire, believed she had struck, and immediately abandoned their advantageous position, vying with each other for the honour of taking possession. This circumstance must be considered as one of those casual events, which occurring independent of ourselves, should teach us never to relinquish hope even in our greatest perplexities. The mistake being observed by Captain Barrett, a broadside double-shotted was prepared, the colours re-hoisted, and "the whole" (says his biographer) "poured in with so happy a direction, that several of the boats, and near four hundred men perished."
The Danes, mistaking that for treachery, which arose from chance, were extremely irritated, and violent in their threats and censures against Captain Barrett; and this candid relation of the circumstance is justly due to his character, to clear it from the aspersions with which it has in consequence been loaded. The action lasted nearly eight hours; during the time, a shell having fallen on the lower deck of the Africa, the ship was saved from destruction by a boy, who, with great coolness, hove it out of the port while burning, and the concussion caused by its explosion in the water violently shook the vessel.
In the year 1809, Captain Barrett was appointed to the Minotaur, of seventy-four guns, celebrated for the beauty of her model, and stationed in the Gulph of Finland. In the different attacks on the Russian flotillas at Percola and Aspro, the ship's company severely suffered. On this station the services of the Minotaur were highly creditable to the captain and his company, and under her protection the last convoy of 1809 arrived.
In the spring of the year 1810, the Minotaur sailed again for the Baltic, and was principally employed in escorting the different convoys from Hanno to Deershead. At the
