Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v3p1.djvu/356

  on this occasion, consisted of about 3000 men, with four 18-pounders, four mortars, and some field-pieces, commanded by Sir Archibald Campbell in person; the part borne by the navy is thus detailed by the senior officer, Lieutenant Thomas Fraser, in his report to Captain Marryat:

“In compliance with your orders, on the 9th instant, at 11, at the commencement of the flood-tide, I proceeded up the river in the Honorable Company’s cruiser Thetis; accompanied by the Jessey [Penang cruiser], six of the gun-flotilla, six row-boats, and the Malay proa you were pleased to put under my command. At 2 the Jessey and the row boats took up the position assigned them, about three-quarters of a mile below Kemmendine. The Thetis was anchored at the entrance of a creek about the same distance above Kemmendine, and abreast of the stockade from which the gun was taken on the 3d instant, but which has since been greatly strengthened. The gun-flotilla were to have been placed abreast of the opposite point, forming the entrance of the creek (distinguished by a pagoda), on which, since the 3d, there has been erected a formidable stockade; but in consequence of the ebb-tide making against them, with the exception of the Robert Spankie and two others, they failed in their endeavours to take up their position, and were brought up a short distance below the Thetis.

“About 10, the batteries opened their fire against Kemmendine; the stockade on the pagoda point at the same instant commenced a fire of musketry, and from four small pieces, apparently 4 or 6-pounders, upon the Robert Spankie and the other two gun-vessels opposite to it, which was returned by them, and kept up on both sides for upwards of an hour. The stockades abreast of the Thetis not having fired a shot the whole time, and observing that the flotilla did not succeed in silencing the other, I took advantage of the flood-tide just then making, to drop abreast of it in the Thetis, and after a fire of half an hour, so far silenced the enemy that from that time they only fired an occasional musket at intervals when we had ceased, but altogether so badly directed that we had only one man wounded, belonging to a row-boat at that time alongside the Thetis. Having observed a great number of boats, many of a large size, collected about two miles above us, and considering it possible that at night, during