Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v3p1.djvu/138

  stimulus from witnessing the attack of the Courland battery, and other operations terminating in the conquest of that island. On his return to England, in the autumn of 1803, he experienced a most destructive hurricane; and, after weathering that, had a very narrow escape in the chops of the Channel; for the ship being run foul of by one much larger, he was forced overboard, and in the consequent confusion had nearly been abandoned to his fate.

Being now decidedly bent upon maritime adventure, and his friends averse to his entering the navy, Mr. Smyth next went to the East Indies, with the intention of serving in that country as a free mariner; but he had not been there any great length of time, before the Honorable Company’s cruiser Cornwallis, in which he had just returned from an expedition against the Mahé Islands, was purchased by Government, commissioned as a frigate, and placed under the command of Captain Charles James Johnston; with whom Mr. Smyth continued to serve, in that ship and the Powerful 74; from the commencement of 1805, until the latter was paid off, in Oct. 1809.

The severe typhoons encountered by the Cornwallis, in the China seas, in 1805; – her engaging the Sémillante French frigate, in St. Paul’s bay. Isle Bourbon; and other services off the Mauritius, in 1806; – her novel and interesting cruise, her narrow escape from destruction by fire, with her captures and discoveries in the Pacific Ocean, in 1807; together with the Powerful’s perilous situation while cruising off the Cape of Good Hope, in search of some French frigates; and the utter unfitness of the latter ship for rough service, have been already noticed in our memoir of Captain Johnston. We have also therein stated, that notwithstanding the Powerful’s deplorably crazy state, she was, on her return home, immediately attached to the grand armament destined against Antwerp, and kept in commission until the period above mentioned.

Mr. Smyth then joined the Milford 74, Captain (now Sir Henry W.) Bayntun, under whom he served on the French coast, until that officer was superseded, Aug. 3d, 1810, in consequence of his ship having been selected to bear the flag of Sir Richard Goodwin Keats, K.B. Previous to this, we