ryat was picked up a mile and a half distant from his sloop, in an exhausted and nearly senseless state.
After visiting Surinam, Demerara, and Barbadoes, Mr. Marryat left l’Espiegle at New Providence; proceeded from thence to sick-quarters at Halifax; and returned home a passenger on board the Spartan. His next appointment was, Jan. 31st, 1814, to the Newcastle 58, Captain Lord George Stuart, under whom he assisted at the capture of the American privateers Ida, of 10 guns and 65 men; and Prince de Neufchatel, of 18 guns and 135 men. On the 19th of Dec. 1814, he commanded the Newcastle’s barge, and cut four vessels out of Boston bay; in accomplishing which service eleven of his crew were killed and wounded. He left that ship at Madeira, on account of ill health, Feb. 16th, 1815; returned to England in the Conway 24; and obtained the rank of commander on the 13th of June following.
The military events of June, 1815, being followed by a general peace throughout the civilized world, Captain Marryat then occupied himself in acquiring a perfect knowledge of such branches of science as might prove useful should the Lords of the Admiralty be pleased to employ him in any survey or voyage of discovery; and, we believe, he was actually recalled from Italy, in 1818, to conduct a mission into the interior of Africa[1]. About the same time he received the “warmest thanks” of the Royal Humane Society, for his “most gallant and benevolent exertions” in the cases related above, and for saving the lives of several other persons under circumstances not quite so hazardous, but still deserving of “admiration.” He was also presented with the medal of that excellent institution, for his invention of a life-boat, which is described in their forty-seventh report.
Captain Marryat is likewise the inventor of a code of signals for the use of merchant vessels of all nations, including a cypher for secret correspondence. This telegraph is now used in the British and French navies; at all the principal
