Shipley, and at 5 P.M. on the 5th May, the fortress was taken possession of by an advanced corps under Brigadier-General Maitland.
The valuable colony of Surinam was thus added to the British dominions: a frigate of 32 eighteen-pounders, a corvette mounting 18 guns, and all the other national vessels in the rivers, were likewise surrendered. The total number of prisoners taken, exclusive of the staff and civilians, was 2001; the loss sustained by the English amounted to no more than 8 killed and 21 wounded; 5 of the former and 8 of the latter were naval officers and seamen. We shall close our account of this conquest with an extract from Sir Charles Green’s official report to Earl Camden, dated “Paramaribo, May 13, 1804:”
“In all conjunct expeditions the zealous co-operation of the navy becomes of the most essential importance; but such is the peculiar nature of the military positions in this country, that our success depended chiefly upon their exertions, no movements being possibly made without their assistance. It is therefore incumbent on me to bear my sincere testimony to the cordial, zealous, and able support the army has received from Commodore Hood, and all the Captains and other officers of the squadron under his command, which must ever be remembered with gratitude. Captain Maxwell, of the Centaur, having been more particularly attached to the troops under my immediate command on shore, I am bound to notice his spirited and exemplary behaviour.”
Captain Maxwell returned to England with the Commodore’s despatches in June, 1804; and we subsequently find him commanding the Centaur as a private ship on the Jamaica station, where he removed into the Galatea frigate in the summer of 1805. His next appointment was to the Alceste of 46 guns, formerly la Minerve, one of the frigates captured by part of a squadron under Sir Samuel Hood, in Sept. 1806[1].
On the 4th April, 1808, Captain Maxwell being off Cadiz with the Mercury 28, and Grasshopper brig under his orders, observed a fleet of Spanish vessels coming along shore from the northward, under the protection of about twenty gunboats, and a formidable train of flying artillery. On their arrival off Rota he stood in with his little squadron, and commenced a vigorous attack upon them, which continued from
