About three weeks after the above action, the same officers fell in with two large French frigates, and being unable to cope with them, separated. The enemy succeeded in retaking the Flora’s prize, and the Crescent had likewise the misfortune to fall into their hands.
In the month of July following, Captain Pakenham was tried by a court-martial at Portsmouth, for having struck his colours to the Dutch frigate, and the following highly honourable sentence was pronounced: “The Court are unanimously of opinion, that the Hon. Captain Pakenham throughout the action, in a variety of instances, behaved with the coolest and ablest judgment, and with the firmest and most determined resolution; and that he did not strike the Crescent’s colours until he was totally unable to make the smallest defence; the court therefore doth unanimously and honourably acquit the Hon. Captain Pakenham.
“The Court cannot dismiss Captain Pakenham, without expressing their admiration of his conduct on this occasion, wherein he has manifested the skill of an able and judicious seaman, and the intrepidity of a gallant officer; and from the great and extraordinary number of killed and wounded on board the Crescent, as well as the state she was in at the time of her surrender, their highest approbation of the support given by the officers and men to their Captain, and of their courage and steadiness during the action; a circumstance that, at the time it reflects honour on them, does no less credit and honour to the discipline kept up by Captain Pakenham.”
Our officer’s next appointment was to the Minerva frigate; and at the commencement of the war with revolutionary France, in 1793, we find him commanding the Invincible, of 74 guns, attached to the Channel Fleet, under the orders of Earl Howe. On the glorious 1st June, in the following year, that ship acquired at least her due portion of renown, having, by her heavy and animated fire, in a little while, so crippled and annoyed a French 84-gun ship, that she bore up and became an easy conquest to the Queen Charlotte. On this memorable day, the Invincible lost her main-top-mast; had her fore and main lower-masts and yards shot through; rigging and sails much cut; 14 men killed and 31 wounded. So
