Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v2p2.djvu/309

 Shipley, and at 5 P.M. on the 5th May, the fortress was taken possession of by an advanced corps under Brigadier-General Maitland.

The valuable colony of Surinam was thus added to the British dominions: a frigate of 32 eighteen-pounders, a corvette mounting 18 guns, and all the other national vessels in the rivers, were likewise surrendered. The total number of prisoners taken, exclusive of the staff and civilians, was 2001; the loss sustained by the English amounted to no more than 8 killed and 21 wounded; 5 of the former and 8 of the latter were naval officers and seamen. We shall close our account of this conquest with an extract from Sir Charles Green’s official report to Earl Camden, dated “Paramaribo, May 13, 1804:”

Captain Maxwell returned to England with the Commodore’s despatches in June, 1804; and we subsequently find him commanding the Centaur as a private ship on the Jamaica station, where he removed into the Galatea frigate in the summer of 1805. His next appointment was to the Alceste of 46 guns, formerly la Minerve, one of the frigates captured by part of a squadron under Sir Samuel Hood, in Sept. 1806.

On the 4th April, 1808, Captain Maxwell being off Cadiz with the Mercury 28, and Grasshopper brig under his orders, observed a fleet of Spanish vessels coming along shore from the northward, under the protection of about twenty gunboats, and a formidable train of flying artillery. On their arrival off Rota he stood in with his little squadron, and commenced a vigorous attack upon them, which continued from