ceived, notwithstanding it has been my good fortune, by the zeal and exertions of the officers and men I have had the happiness of commanding, to have frequently given aid to vessels in distress.
“In begging your acceptance of my thanks for the polite manner in which you have communicated the ‘Resolution’ of the Company, I am, Sir, &c. &c.
“To Samuel Bruce, Esq.
&c. &c. &c.”
During the remainder of the French war Captain Tobin was actively employed on the Irish and Channel stations, and in the Bay of Biscay, where he was fortunate enough to capture several of the enemy’s armed vessels. In Jan. 1812, his frigate was ordered to be called the Andromache, her former name being transferred to a first rate, building at Portsmouth.
The Andromache formed part of the squadron under Sir George Collier, during the siege of St. Sebastian; and after the fall of that strong fortress[1] she escorted the French garrison to England. On the 23d of the following month, Oct. 1813, Captain Tobin fell in with a large frigate, under jury-masts, which surrendered after a short action, and proved to be la Trave, mounting twenty-eight French 18-pounders, and sixteen 18-pounder carronades, only nine months off the stocks, with a complement of 321 men.
Captain Tobin, in his official letter, detailing the capture of la Trave, says, “such was the disabled state of her masts previously to our meeting, that any further opposition would have been the extreme of rashness;” and it is but an act of justice towards a brave enemy to add, that her commander, finding it impossible to escape by sailing, and after endeavouring for a considerable time to dismantle the Andromache with his stern-chasers, received that ship in a manner creditable to him as a gallant man, and sustained a close action for fifteen minutes, until a destructive fire obliged him to surrender. In addition to the disadvantageous circumstance of his being under jury-masts[2], a strange ship of war
- ↑ See p. 528 et seq.
- ↑ La Trave had been dismasted in a gale of wind on the 16th Oct. and engaged by a British brig of war two days previous to her capture by the Andromache. See Captain Isaac Hawkins Morrison.
