vessels attacked the prize and the boats; and another lugger of superior force was warped out against that which he had captured. By this vessel he was engaged for a considerable time, with so much heavier metal as to render all resistance unavailing; and he had the mortification, having four men killed and seven wounded, of being obliged to surrender himself a prisoner of war, with about nineteen of his companions. The French Directory thought proper to deviate, in respect to him, from that established system which directs the exchange of prisoners, and confined him in the Tower of the Temple, at Paris, where he remained during a period of two years.
Sir W. Sidney Smith finding that neither entreaty nor remonstrance, neither argument nor solicitation, could prevail with those rigid and inflexible revolutionists, who then held the reins of government, and who added insult to the sufferings they imposed upon him, by offering a release on terms to which they could not expect an assent terms which, as a precedent, would soon have rendered nugatory the capture of French prisoners, formed a scheme, and procured friends to aid in the execution of it, by which he eventually obtained his liberty. The enterprise and its success are too generally known to need a more particular relation here[1]; we shall therefore content ourselves with observing, that on his return to England, in May, 1798, he was welcomed by the general congratulation of the people. His arrival was considered as a miracle, which few who heard of it knew how to believe. His Sovereign received him with the warmest affection, and afforded him every mark of attention, not only by his behaviour at his public presentation, but by honouring him with an immediate and private interview at Buckingham House[2].
- ↑ Of our officer’s long imprisonment, and the means by which he effected his escape, an interesting account will be found in the Naval Chronicle, v. 4, p. 459, et seq.; and in Schomberg’s Naval Chronology, v. 3, pp. 100 and 107, inclusive.
- ↑ Whilst Sir W. S. Smith was a captive in the Temple, Mrs. Cosway, who afterwards published “The Siege of Acre,” a Poem, in four books, contrived to obtain a sight of him, either from a window, or by some other means, and made a sketch of him as he sat by the bars of his prison. The head is a profile, and bears some resemblance to its original; but the features are of too haggard a contour to be acknowledged as an accurate
