The Hazard was one of the ships which bore the brunt of an attack made by the squadron under Captain Samuel James Ballard, upon two large French frigates, and the batteries of Ance la Barque, Guadaloupe, Dec. 18th, 1800[1]; on which day her gallant and lamented commander was killed, while returning to his ship from a fort, out of which the enemy had been driven:– his boat’s crew represented that he fell by a grape shot from one of the British ships then firing upon the enemy’s troops; whilst a supernumerary master’s-mate on board the Elizabeth schooner, Lieutenant Fitch, acknowledged he was the person who had discharged a piece at him, under the impression that he was a French officer. It may, however, be consoling to his surviving friends to know, that he fell by the hands of an enemy; for a colonel who was taken prisoner at the subsequent reduction of Guadaloupe, and sent home in the Hazard, so minutely described to Lieutenant Robertson the manner in which he lost his life, as to remove every doubt on the subject. It was simply thus:– Captain Cameron, after striking the colours in the evacuated fort, wrapped them round one of his arms, which had been grazed by a musket-ball, and was perceived by a French officer to be standing on the beach with his boat-keeper, waiting the return of the crew who had straggled. The officer instantly snatched a musket from one of his soldiers, who was skulking in the bushes, and shot the gallant captain dead on the spot. Notwithstanding this, it is possible the boat-keeper did actually believe the correctness of his own assertion, – that the fatal shot was fired from a British ship.
After the action Lieutenant Robertson waited upon the commodore of the squadron, who was pleased to pass a high encomium on his conduct, and personally to thank him in the warmest terms for the manner in which the Hazard was conducted and fought after Captain Cameron had been called from her, by signal, in the early part of the battle: he subsequently granted him the following testimonial:
