Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/135

Rh in charge of the prizes which Surcouf had taken in her. Surcouf, it may he recollected, had abandoned her for his prize, the Cartier. Dutertre was then appointed to her command, and in her he made one or two cruises, the details regarding which are altogether wanting. He was next heard of as commanding the Malartic, in which he made the prizes to which I have alluded, and subsequently, in addition, he captured the Governor North and the Marquess Wellesley. Shortly afterwards, however, the Malartic was forced to strike her colours to an English vessel of superior force, the Phœnix, and Dutertre was taken prisoner to England.

Released by the peace of Amiens Dutertre recommen his career in the Indian seas. He again became the terror of those waters. In concert with another adventurer named Courson, he, in one season, captured the Rebecca, the Active, the Clarendon, the William, the Betsey Jane, the Henry Addington, the Admiral Rainier, the Lady William Bentinck, the Nancy, the Actæon, the Brothers, the Hebe, the Mongamah, and the Warren Hastings. So great was the consternation caused that we find the English journals of the period complaining that "there is no part of the world, notwithstanding the superiority of the English marine, in which the enemy does not succeed in molesting our navigation, and in causing us infinite losses."

It was, after all, but the natural consequence of the system of privateering thus affecting the power which carried the commerce of the world.