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 he had enlisted some eighty Cornish miners, who were sent round to the ship at Spithead. With these and about a dozen seamen, besides the officers, who were obliged to help in the work aloft, he put to sea; and, by dint of pressing from the merchant ships in the Channel, succeeded in filling up his complement, but with very few man-of-war's men. On 18 June the Nymphe sailed from Falmouth, on the news of two French frigates having been seen in the Channel, and at daybreak on the 19th fell in with the Cléopâtre, also of 36 guns, commanded by Captain Mullon, one of the few officers of the ancien régime who still remained in the French navy. After a short but very sharp action, the Cléopâtre's mizenmast and wheel were shot away, and the ship, being unmanageable, fell foul of the Nymphe, and was boarded and captured in a fierce rush. Mullon was mortally wounded, and died in trying to swallow his commission, which, in his dying agony, he had mistaken for the code of secret signals. The code thus fell intact into Pellew's hands, and was sent to the admiralty. The Cléopâtre, the first frigate taken in the war, was brought to Portsmouth, and on 29 June Pellew was presented to the king by the Earl of Chatham and was knighted.

In January 1794 Pellew was appointed to the Arethusa, a powerful 18-pounder frigate—carrying 32-pounder carronades on her quarter-deck and forecastle—which in April was attached to the frigate squadron appointed to cruise towards Ushant, under Commodore Sir John Borlase Warren [q. v.] On St. George's Day they fell in with one of the French squadrons which Warren was specially directed to suppress. They captured three ships out of the four, the Pomone, the largest and heaviest frigate then afloat, striking her flag actually to the Arethusa. On 23 Aug. the same squadron fell in with and destroyed another small French squadron; and the admiralty, encouraged by this repeated success, formed a second squadron, under the command of Pellew, which, within a few days of its sailing, fell in with and captured the French frigate Révolutionnaire [see Nagle, Edmund (DNB00)]. During the winter the frigates continued to keep watch on the fleet in Brest. In the end of January 1795 Pellew was moved into the Indefatigable, an old 64-gun ship which had been cut down to a frigate, and in her was employed during the year cruising off Ushant, either independently or in company with Warren.

In January 1796 the Indefatigable was refitting at Plymouth, when, on the afternoon of the 26th, the Dutton, a large transport bound to the West Indies with troops, was forced by stress of weather to put into the Sound, and in a violent gale was driven ashore under the citadel. Her masts went overboard, and she was beating to pieces. The captain and others of the officers were on shore; those on board were young, inexperienced, and unequal to the emergency. The men were panic-struck; some of the soldiers broke open the spirit-room and drowned their despair. Pellew happened to be on shore at the time, and, running down to the beach, succeeded in getting on board. He then took command; a boat sent from the frigate came to his assistance, and by his exertions hawsers were laid out to the shore, and Pellew, with his sword drawn, directed the landing. Every one was safely landed before the wreck broke up. His conduct was deservedly praised. The corporation of Plymouth voted him the freedom of the town, the merchants of Liverpool presented him with a service of plate, and on 5 March he was created a baronet, with the grant of an honourable augmentation to his arms, a civic wreath, and for a crest a stranded ship.

During the following months Pellew commanded a strong squadron of frigates on the coast of France, which made several important prizes, among others the 38-gun frigate Unité and the 40-gun frigate Virginie. In December they were off Brest, and on the 16th, when the French fleet put to sea, Pellew sent the Révolutionnaire to carry the news to Sir John Colpoys, then some distance to the westward, while he himself, in the Indefatigable, carried the news to Falmouth, whence it was sent post to the admiralty. On the 22nd he was at sea again, with the Amazon in company; and, after a stormy cruise in the Bay of Biscay, was returning towards the Channel, when, late in the afternoon of 13 Jan. 1797, the two frigates fell in with the French 74-gun ship Droits de l'Homme, one of the fleet which had sailed on 16 Dec., and had been scattered on the coast of Ireland. It was blowing a furious south-westerly gale; the Droits de l'Homme had her fore and main top-masts carried away, and rolled so heavily that when attacked by the frigates she could not open her lower-deck ports. For nearly an hour the Indefatigable, at first alone, and afterwards assisted by the Amazon, continued pouring in raking broadsides. Towards midnight the Frenchman's mizenmast was shot away, and the action continued in this tremendous storm till near daybreak. The three ships were by that time in Audierne Bay, the