1811	Light Squadrons and Single Ships	358

point of scantling, and at which principally the Amphion had directed her shot, was pierced through and through. The hull of the Flore was also the part in which she had suffered the most ; and her loss of men, which was known to include her captain badly wounded, must have been tolerably severe.

At 4 p.m. the Favorite, having been set on fire by her surviving crew, blew up with a great explosion. Both the Corona and Bellona were very near sharing her fate, and placed in considerable jeopardy the lives of all that were on board of them. As soon as Lieutenant O'Brien arrived on board the Bellona to take possession, he interrogated the gunner as to the state of the magazine. The latter privately informed him, that Captain Duodo, at the commencement of the action, had ordered to be placed in the small bower-cable tier two or three barrels of gunpowder ; intending, as soon as all hopes of further resistance were at an end, to set fire to the train, and, if not blow up the ship, to intimidate the British from taking possession, and thus enable the survivors of the crew to effect their escape. But Captain Duodo's wound came opportunely to prevent the fructuation of his diabolical design; and the officers of the Bellona themselves probably had, for their own safety, watched very narrowly the movements of their captain. Lieutenant O'Brien visited the cable-tier, saw the barrels of gunpowder, and, placing one of his men as sentry over them, proceeded to the cabin ; where lay the mortally wounded projector, wholly unconscious of the discovery of his plot. Captain Duodo expressed his gratitude, in the strongest manner, for the attention paid by the British officer to a " beaten foe, " but said not a word about the powder ; nor were his dying moments disturbed with the slightest allusion to the circumstance.

The Corona was much nearer destruction. At 9 p.m., when in tow by the Active, the prize caught fire in the main top ; and the whole of her mainmast, with its rigging, was presently in flames. The Active immediately cut herself clear, and the Corona continued burning until 11 h. 30 m. p.m., ; when, owing to the prompt and energetic exertions of Lieutenants James Dickinson of the Cerberus, and George Haye of the Active, and their respective parties of seamen, the flames were got under, but not without the loss of the ship's mainmast, and, unfortunately ; of some lives. Four seamen and one marine of the Active were drowned, and Lieutenant Haye was severely burnt ; as were midshipman Siphus Goode and two seamen belonging to the Cerberus.

In reviewing the merits of the action, although we might easily show that, in point of force, the Amphion and Cerberus were both inferior, and the Active herself not more than equal, to any of the four 40-gun frigates on the opposite side, and that the Bellona and Carolina were either of them a decided overmatch for the Volage, we shall consider that the seven larger ships

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