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 which were brass guns taken on board at Messina, in lieu of her four 9-pounders) and twelve 32-pounder carronades, with an established complement of 281 officers, men, and boys, of whom, as Captain Stewart states, thirty were then absent. The Badere Zaffer had on board, including part of the galley’s crew, 543 men of every description. The British frigate measured 998 tons, her principal opponent nearly 1300, and the Alis Fezan about 730. The superior officers of the Seahorse at this period were Lieutenants George Downie, Thomas Bennett, and Richard Glinn Vallack; Mr. Thomas Curtis, master, and Lieutenant John Cook, of the royal marines. On the 9th July, the Seahorse and her prize anchored in the harbour of Miconi; the Turkish prisoners having worked at the pumps, on being promised their liberty. From thence they had a good passage to Malta, whore Captain Stewart had just completed the refitment of his own ship, when he heard that a British Ambassador was come to Palermo, on his way to Turkey, but doubted, after hearing of the late action, how to proceed. Captain Stewart immediately volunteered to go over to him, and he soon determined to sail for the Dardanelles in the Seahorse.

This diplomatist was Mr. Robert Adair, who in consequence of some important information, obtained by Captain Stewart, respecting the state of affairs in Turkey, had been sent out from England to renew the negociations with the Porte; and who thus speaks of the Seahorse’s action:–

“This event happened a very few days before, my arrival at Palermo; and I confess that, on a first view, I could not but consider it as extremely embarrassing. It was impossible to judge, either what change so desperate an encounter might not produce on the pacific dispositions of the Turks; or whether the encounter itself might not rather have been occasioned by a previous alteration in those views; and this embarrassment, coming in addition to what I had also just learned, of a fresh revolution in Constantinople, in which the Sultan, to whom I was accredited, had been deposed, and most of the ministers supposed to be friendly to us had been put to death, caused me to hesitate, for a moment, as to the course most proper to be pursued. From any apprehensions, however, as to the bad effects likely to result from Captain Stewart’s vigorous proceeding, I was relieved on my first interview with him. Indeed I soon found that, in one sense, it was likely to assist rather than impede my negociation: as, besides the