shoal water obliged her to keep, with little apparent effect. In a few minutes, however, one of the ships, which proved to be the Resolutie, armed merchant-ship of 700 tons, with a valuable cargo on board, struck her colours. At 4 h. 30 m. P.M., just as the Psyché was hoisting out her boats to attempt carrying the second ship by boarding, she also struck, and proved to be the Dutch national corvette Scipio, of 24 guns and 150 men, Captain Carrage, who was mortally wounded on the occasion. Shortly afterwards the brig, which was the Ceres, a remarkably fine vessel in the Dutch company's service, mounting 12 guns, with a crew of 70 men, fired a broadside and hauled down her colours. By the persevering exertions of the Psyché's officers and men, all three of the prizes were got afloat the same night without injury. This was a very spirited, gallant affair; and we find, after a lapse of nearly thirty years, the captain of the Psyché knighted. The companionship of the Bath, which he wore previous to his late reward, was very inadequate for the service he had rendered.

With the intelligence communicated by his son, Rear-admiral Sir Edward Pellew, on the 20th of November, sailed from Malacca with the Culloden and Powerful 74s, frigates Caroline and Fox, sloops Victoire, Samarang, Seaflower, and Jaseur, and transport Worcester, having on board a detachment of troops under Lieutenant-colonel Lockhart. On the 5th of December the squadron arrived off Point Panka; and a commission, with a flag of truce, was immediately sent to the commandant of the Dutch naval force, for the surrender of the ships-of-war lying at Gressie. The Dutch commodore thought fit to detain the boat, and to place in arrest the persons on board of her: he then sent one of his officers to Sir Edward, with information of the unwarrantable step he had taken, accompanied with a flat refusal to deliver up the ships, although they were all in a dismantled state, with their guns on shore.

On the next morning, the 6th, the Culloden and Powerful, having been lightened, sailed up, accompanied by the remainder of the squadron, to Gressie, cannonading a battery of twelve 9 and 18 pounders at Sambelangan on the island of Madura; the fire from which, with hot shot, struck several of the ships, but hurt no person on board, and was very soon silenced. The governor and council of Sourabaya, a settlement about 15 miles higher up the river, and to which Gressie was subordinate, released the gentlemen of the commission, and the boat's crew, disclaimed the violent measures pursued by the commodore, and

offered to treat. A treaty was accordingly concluded for delivering up the ships-of-war, consisting, as already mentioned, of the two 68-gun ships Pluto and Revolutie, also a sheer-hulk (late a 68-gun ship), the Kortenaar, together with the Rutkoff company's ship, pierced for 40 guns. But the Dutch commodore had previously scuttled the whole of them. On the 11th the British completed the destruction of the ships, by setting them on fire; and then proceeded to destroy the guns and military stores in the garrison of Gressie, and at the battery of Sambelangan.

BRITISH AND FRENCH FLEETS.

THE number of line-of-battle ships, in commission as cruisers at the date of the Abstract for the present year,1 has attained an amount not previously equalled, nor subsequently exceeded. This abstract also exhibits, in its larger line total, the greatest number of line-of-battle ships to be found in the same compartment of any other abstract of the series; and among the ships are 19 of that fine class, the N or middling sized 74, exclusive of 16 other ships of the same class, that remained unfinished of those which had been ordered in antecedent years. The number of national prizes, purchased into the service during the year 1807, will be found to be nearly double that of any other year within the limits of this work;2 and the Casualty-column on the Decrease side displays a total, greater by a trifle than has appeared, or than, probably, will again appear. Of the 38 British vessels so lost, no fewer than 29 foundered at sea or were wrecked; and, unhappily, a great proportion of their crews perished with them.

The number of commissioned officers and masters, belonging to the British navy at the commencement of the year 1808, was,

1 See Appendix, Annual Abstract, No. 16. 2 See Appendix, Nos. 14, 15, and 16.

And the number of seamen and marines, voted for the service of the same year, was 130,000.1

A new era was commencing in the navy of France. Such had been Napoleon's exertions since the disastrous affair of Trafalgar, that the spring of this year saw him possessed of upwards of 80 sail of the line, including 20 recently ordered to be laid down at Antwerp, Brest, Lorient, Toulon, and other ports. In Brest a squadron of eight sail of the line and four frigates was, in the course of the summer, got ready for sea, and only remained in port because unable to elude the vigilance of the Channel fleet under Admiral Lord Gambier, who, since March, had succeeded to the command of it. Early in the year, as will be presently more fully noticed, a French squadron of six sail of the line sailed from the road of Isle d'Aix, and large and powerful frigates were occasionally slipping out of other ports along the French Channel and Atlantic frontier. Of the minor parts of France, Cherbourg was fast rising into importance: the basin there constructing, and nearly finished, would, in a year or two, it was expected, be capable of holding a fleet of line-of-battle ships. It had long been a celebrated port for frigates, and several very fine and powerful ones had sailed from and were constructing within it. The five French sail of the line and one frigate, so long shut up in the harbour of Cadiz, met a peculiar fate; a fate that was the opening scene of a most interesting era in the annals of freedom, and of which we shall presently give some account.

There were

The French Mediterranean ports were again becoming objects of enticement to British squadrons. Toulon, Venice, and even Spezzia, were in full activity. In the former port a ship of 120 guns, the Commerce-de-Paris, and another of 80, the Robuste, had recently been launched; and a new 74, the Genois, had arrived there from Genoa. These, with the Borée and Annibal 74s already in the road, made five sail of the line. also three or four line-of-battle ships on the stocks, two of which, one a three-decker, were nearly ready for launching. At Genoa a 74, the Breslaw, was expected to be launched in the autumn, and one or two others were building at Venice; and, in the language of the Exposé, Spezzia would soon be a second Toulon. To the five French sail of the line already at anchor in the lastnamed port, and which were under the command of Vice-admiral Ganteaume, five others were added in the course of the spring. Whence these came we will proceed to relate: but how it hap1 See Appendix, No. 17.

pened that they escaped the numerous British cruisers scattered over the ocean, is not so easily to be explained.

The British squadron, which, towards the end of the year 1807, was stationed off Rochefort to watch the motions of the French squadron at anchor in Aix road, was composed of seven sail of the line under the command of Rear-admiral Sir Richard John Strachan in the Cæsar. In order the better to enforce the blockade, Sir Richard anchored his ships in Basque roads. On the 29th of November, being short of provisions, the squadron weighed and stood to the offing, in the hope of falling in with some victuallers, which Sir Richard had appointed, to meet him at the distance of 10 or 12 leagues south-west of Roche Bonne. Being driven by strong north-east gales rather beyond the rendezvous, and some delay having occurred in the departure of the victuallers from England, the squadron did not get its wants supplied before the 12th of January; nor was it until the 18th that the state of the weather would permit the Mediator to be cleared, and the provisions which she had brought out to be divided among the ships.

In the interim some important occurrences had happened in the port, the entrance to which Sir Richard Strachan's squadron had thus been compelled to leave unguarded. On the 4th of January the French 74-gun ship Patriote, Captain Joseph-Hyacinthe-Isidore Khrom, from Chesapeake bay, as recently as the 16th of December, had anchored in the road of Isle d'Aix; and on the 17th of January, at 8 A.M,, Rear-admiral Allemand, observing that only a frigate and a brig cruised off the port, took advantage of a moderate breeze at north-east by north, and put to sea with the 120 gun-ship Majestueux, 74 gun-ships Ajax (newly launched), Jemmappes, Lion, Magnanime, and Suffren, one frigate, and one brig-corvette.

The British frigate off the port, which was the Phoenix, Captain Zachary Mudge, lay to about 20 minutes to watch the motions of the French ships; when, finding that the latter were in chase of her, she signalled the 18-gun brig-sloop Raleigh, Captain Joseph Ore Masefield, to close, and made all sail west by north. At 11 A.M. the Phoenix lost sight of the French squadron, and at noon despatched the Raleigh to England with the intelligence. On the 19th, while in search of Sir Richard's squadron, the frigate fell in with the Attack gun-brig, Lieutenant Thomas Swain, and communicated to her the important information. On the 20th the Phoenix reconnoitred Isle d'Yeu, and discovered lying in the road one line-of-battle ship, partially