| | NAVAL HISTORY |
| 1804 |
BOATS OF THE GALATEA AT THE SAINTES | 275 |
killed, besides Lieutenant Hayman, was the master, and Mr. Wall, a midshipman ; and among the wounded were several officers, including Lieutenant Hall of the marines, who lost an arm and was made prisoner. The number of killed and wounded together, as reported on the return of the boats, was 44, including Lieutenants Hayman and Hall, but not, as it would appear, the seven killed and 14 wounded out of the 24 seamen and marines belonging to the barge. The addition of these makes the loss of the Galatea, in attempting to cut out the Lilly, 65 in killed and wounded : whereas the French acknowledge a loss of only four men killed ; and, although they do not enumerate the wounded, name, as among them, Captain Lapointe, commanding the Général-Ernouf, and Lieutenant Mouret, commanding the detachment of troops put on board by the commandant of the garrison.
The object of the service, upon which the Galatea's boats had been despatched on the evening of the 12th, was laudable ; inasmuch as it was not only to recapture a ship that belonged to the British navy, but to cut short the cruise of a privateer likely to do a serious injury to British commerce. Nor was the number of men sent, admitting it to have been each time the same, inadequate apparently to the purpose in view, that of surprising (for their lay the gist of the enterprise) and capturing the Lilly at her anchors in the road. The boats returned without finding the vessel. Having hoisted them in, the Galatea should have made sail from, not towards, the spot where the privateer lay. Instead of this, the frigate hovered off the port all the day, observed a second privateer moored along with the first, witnessed, and, the French say, felt, the strength of the batteries that protected both privateers ; and yet, in the evening, Captain Heathcote, a second time, sends his boats to pass, and, having accomplished or failed in their main object, to repass, those batteries ; batteries, the fire from which the Galatea herself, much less her boats, would have been unable to withstand.
For an enterprise so doubtful in its expediency and so fatal in its result, a brief English account would suffice ; and none, indeed, appears to have' been published. The French, on the other hand, made public every particular; every particular, at least, which they thought would contribute to aggrandize the exploit performed by Lapointe and Lieutenant Mouret. But they tell us nothing of any aid afforded by the schooner privateer, or by the batteries ; whose united fire, nevertheless, powerfully co-operated in repulsing the assailants. That there were forts, the account admits, openly, when alluding to the supposed effect of some shells thrown at the frigate, and tacitly, when dwelling upon the accident which, the French declare, befel three of the British boats, in their endeavours to retire. These, they state, and positively state, were sunk, with their crews. With equal truth the French add, that there was a fifth boat
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