Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/134

106 bound for England, he died on the way (30th March). In him France lost one of the most daring of her sailor adventurers, and the Anglo-Indian community were relieved of the obligation to give to the question, as to the name of the privateersman by whom their last merchant vessel had been captured, the stereotyped reply of "toujours lemême."

But little inferior to Lemême as a destroyer of British commerce in the Indian seas was Jean Dutertre. In the chronicle of the Asiatic Annual Register for November 1799, there appeared the following notice: — "On Monday morning, the 28th October last, an express arrived at the General Post Office, Bombay, from Masulipatam, conveying accounts of the capture of the undermentioned ships by a French privateer, a little, to the northward of the Madras Roads, viz., the Nawab of Arcot's ship, Surprise galley, the Princess Royal, formerly a Company's ship, the Thomas, ditto, an extra ship, the Joyce, belonging to Masulipatam, the Lord Hobart, belonging to Madras. * * * The privateer by which these ships were captured is supposed to be the Malartic, mounting 12 guns, and commanded by the same person who took the Danish ship Haabat on the coast four months ago."

The supposition was correct. The privateer was the Malartic, carrying 12 guns, having a crew of 110 men, and commanded by Jean Dutertre. Dutertre was born at Lorient and early took to the sea. He happened to be at the Isle of France when the Emilie arrived there