capture of la Favorite, French cutter privateer, of 14 guns and 70 men[1].
In July 1809, the subject of this memoir embarked as a volunteer on board the Superb 74, bearing the flag of Sir R. G. Keats, and forming part of the grand armament destined to act against the enemy’s forces in the Scheldt. During the whole of that campaign he commanded a flotilla of gun-boats, and his conduct on every occasion was highly spoken of by the naval commander-in-chief, from whose public despatches, reporting the surrender of Camvere and Flushing[2] we make the following extracts:
“Aug. 4, 1809.– The fire of the gun-boats was exceedingly well-directed, and did much damage to the (former) town. The officers and men engaged in that service had a great claim to my admiration. Three of our gun-boats were sunk.”
“Aug. 17.– I cannot conclude this letter without assuring their Lordships that every captain, officer, seaman, and marine, have most zealously done their duty; nor will it, I hope, be thought taking away from the merits of others, in drawing their Lordships’ particular notice to the energetic exertions of the captains, officers, and men employed in the gun-boats: they have been constantly under fire, and gone through all the hardships of their situation with the utmost cheerfulness.”
The hardships alluded to by Sir Richard J. Strachan, are more fully noticed by a surgeon belonging to one of the bomb-vessels, in whose diary we find the following passages:
- ↑ Le Bougainville was named after a French circumnavigator whom Captain Carteret’s father fell in with on his return from the South Seas, in 1769, and whose artful attempt to draw the English commander into a breach of his obligation to secrecy, is very properly described by Campbell, “as unworthy of that spirit of enterprise, which led him to undertake so dangerous a navigation, which he has related with so much elegance.” See “Lives of the British Admirals,” edit. 1813, Vol. V. p. 251, et seq.
- ↑ See Vol. II. p. 906, et seq.
