4 o’clock until 6h 30' P.M. when two of the flotilla being destroyed, the remainder obliged to retreat, the batteries at Rota silenced, and many of the merchantmen driven on shore, the boats of the frigates were sent in under the directions of Lieutenant Allan Stewart, who boarded and brought off seven tartans, loaded with valuable ship timber, from under the very muzzles of the enemy’s guns, although supported by numerous armed barges and pinnaces sent from Cadiz to assist in their defence. This spirited service was performed in the teeth of eleven French and Spanish line-of-battle ships then lying ready for sea, and must therefore be considered as reflecting the highest credit on Captain Maxwell and his brave companions, whose situation during the action was rather a critical one, as the wind blew dead upon the shore, and the ships were compelled to tack every fifteen minutes, in order to avoid the dangerous shoals near Rota. The loss sustained by the British was confined to the Grasshopper, whose noble conduct will be more particularly noticed in our memoir of her commander, the present Captain Thomas Searle, C.B.
Subsequent to this event Captain Maxwell was actively employed on the coast of Italy, where he assisted at the destruction of several armed vessels and martello towers, as also in bringing off a large quantity of timber from a depot belonging to the enemy at Terracina. On the 22d May, 1810, a party from the Alceste landed near Frejus, stormed a battery of two 24-pounders, spiked the guns, broke the carriages, blew up the magazine, and threw the shot into the sea. A few days afterwards her boats attacked a French convoy bound to the eastward, captured four vessels laden with merchandise, drove two others on shore, and obliged the remainder to put back.
In the ensuing autumn Captain Maxwell was attached to the inshore squadron off Toulon: and in the spring of 181 1 we find him cruizing on the coast of Istria, under the orders of Captain (now Sir James) Brisbane, to whose memoir we must refer our readers for an account of the destruction of a French national brig in the small harbour of Parenza, by the Belle Poule and Alceste, on which occasion each ship had
