Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v4p1.djvu/410

 slipped her, and both commenced a joint attack, with a heavy fire of great guns and small arms, on our boat, which was returned by her six-pounder and small arms, until close alongside the lugger, which vessel, while in the act of being boarded, lowered her sails, declaring she had surrendered; but at this critical moment, perceiving that our boat had fresh way and must unavoidably shoot a-head, they cut the rope of the grapnel, which had been thrown on board them, again hoisted their sails, and re-commenced the action. The schooner having made sail to be off, on seeing, as she supposed, her consort surrender, on this hove-to, and renewed a heavy fire for her support, which was as briskly returned. The lugger then made for the schooner, and the people had just succeeded in getting out of her, on board the latter, when our boat also arrived alongside: not a moment was lost; Lieutenant Robertson and his intrepid crew entered pell mell along with them; and in a few minutes, with irresistible impetuosity, drove every man below. She proved.to be the Danish privateer schooner Eleanor, fitted for sixteen guns, but having only one long 9-pounder (on a pivot), two short 18-pounders, and two swivels mounted, with a quantity of small-arms, and a complement of thirty-seven men, twenty-two of whom had been selected from the King’s boats. She had always been accustomed to carry sixty-five men, is a fine vessel, and has been out five weeks, but made only one capture, a Swedish sloop in ballast. She sustained a loss of three men killed and four dangerously wounded: I am happy to say, this truly gallant exploit has been achieved without any loss on our part, except two men wounded – a seaman severely, and a marine dangerously.

“Convinced that a bare recital of the foregoing circumstances, of which, until the close of day, I was an admiring though distant spectator; and, after dark, heard and saw very distinctly, by the heavy fire kept up; will, both with the Admiral and Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, have infinitely more weight, and enable them more correctly to appreciate the merits of the officers and men, than could be effected by any eulogium of mine, I shall abstain therefrom, aud merely observe that, abstracting this circumstance, as also the degree of judgment and enterprise with which Lieutenant Robertson had a few days previous, when detached from this ship, in a boat, captured two of the enemy’s armed vessels, which combined were infinitely superior to that which he had to oppose to them, my duty compels me to observe, that, since I have known the service, I have never met in it a, young man more eminently gifted with every quality calculated to render him an ornament to his profession. He speaks in the highest terms of the firmness and intrepidity with which he was seconded by Messrs. Pole and Madden, James Black (coxswain), and every individual of the boat’s crew. Mr. Pole has passed his examination; Mr. Madden, who was the first on the enemy’s deck, has a few months of his time to serve; and James Black, to whose coolness and steadiness in steering and managing the boat in the various critical situations in which they were placed. Lieutenant Robertson, in a considerable degree, 