| Naval history of Great Britain
by
William James |
| 1806 |
Light Squadrons and Single Ships |
260 |
was taken of all the above vessels, and the British got back to their schooners with so slight a loss as one man badly wounded. The names of the officers, who accompanied Captain Rushworth in this very gallant and successful enterprise, he thus alludes to " I also feel it my duty to state the great assistance I received from Lieutenants Russell and Murray, and Sub-lieutenants Blake and Brown. " Unfortunately we cannot, in this instance, give the names with greater precision.
On the 9th of September, at noon, as the British 22-gun ship Constance, Captain Alexander Saunderson Burrowes, and gun-brigs Strenuous, Lieutenant John Nugent, and Sharpshooter, Lieutenant John Goldie, were beating to the westward from their anchorage off Saint-Malo, they discovered a French frigate-built ship endeavouring to pass between them and Cape Fréhel. The latter was the flute or store-ship Salamandre, of 26 guns (22 long 8-pounders and four 24-pounder carronades), and a crew of at least 80 men, commanded by Lieutenant de vaisseau Victor Amédée Salomon, from Saint-Malo, bound to Brest, with a cargo of ship-timber. Finding herself closely pursued, with no chance of escape by dint of sailing, the Salamandre ran on shore among some rocks, and close under a battery. The Strenuous had so advanced in the pursuit as to be in danger of sharing the same fate ; and it was only by great exertions that the brig got clear. The British squadron anchored for the night. On the following morning the wind greatly increased ; and, the French ship, the battery on the hill, and the troops on shore, appearing too formidable to be attacked by boats, under such unfavourable circumstances, Captain Burrowes, who, indeed, believed the Salamandre to be irretrievably lost, weighed and steered for the island of Jersey.
As soon as the coast was clear and the tide served, the Salamandre, with the assistance afforded her from the shore, got off ; and, being too much damaged to proceed on her voyage, returned to Saint- Malo. Here, after repairing her damages, the Salamandre remained, watching an opportunity to escape, until the morning of the 12th of October ; when, the wind being fair and no enemy to be seen in the offing, she put to sea. It so happened, that at 6 A.M. the Constance and Strenuous, accompanied now, instead of the Sharpshooter, by the 16-gun brig-sloop Sheldrake, Captain John Thicknesse, and the hired armed cutter Britannia, had weighed from off the island of Chausey, with a light breeze at south-east, purposely to reconnoitre the port of St.-Malo. At about 8 A.M. the Salamandre was discovered off Cape Fréhel, and was immediately chased, the British vessels having to employ their sweeps on account of the lightness of the breeze. At about noon the Salamandre succeeded in getting into the bay of Erqui, close in with the rocks. She there carried out bow and quarter springs, and made every preparation for an obstinate defence, having the aid of a two-gun
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