distributed amongst them, and a bill for that amount was accordingly handed to the petty-officers, who, without signifying their real intentions, asked permission to wait on the donor for the purpose of thanking him. Being indulged in their request, they nobly returned the bill, saying they did not war with individuals, especially women and children; but if he chose to give them a glass of grog each, they had no objection to drink to the health of himself and his family! The following day the whole crew were regaled with some porter at Lucien’s expense.
The Pomone was unfortunately wrecked, by striking on a sunken rock, about two cables’ length S.W. from the Needles Point, in the evening of Oct. 14, 1811. The court-martial assembled at Portsmouth on the 25th of the same month, to try Captain Barrie for the loss of his ship, agreed, that no blame was imputable on the occasion to him or any of his officers, except the Master, who was severely reprimanded for not having taken accurate bearings of Hurst light-house before he attempted to go through the passage, and for not having paid sufficient attention to the observations of Captain Barrie, as to the said light-house. Captain Barrie and all his other officers were most fully acquitted.
It was our intention, when we commenced this memoir, to have attempted a description of Captain Barrie’s method of governing a ship’s company, the happy effects of which were very apparent to all those officers who ever fell in with the Pomone; but as we have yet to follow him through the late war on the other side of the Atlantic, and as an account of his services in that quarter will necessarily occupy a large portion of our remaining pages in this volume, we must take leave of that frigate for the present, and reserve such observations as may be necessary on the subject of her internal discipline till the time shall arrive for us to notice the services of the officer whom Captain Barrie, in one of the preceding letters, so justly styles “his gallant friend.”
Captain Barrie was appointed to the Dragon, a third rate, in the spring of 1813; and from that period he was employed in a series of active services on the coast of America, till the termination of hostilities in 1815.
