Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v4p2.djvu/214

 this time a heavy fire of artillery and musketry was on us, and the Lascars would not face it. Lieutenant, Keele, of the Arachne, commanding the naval force with me, pushed on shore, and gallantly went to see if the nullah could be passed: he came back almost directly, and informed me there was a boat in the nullah, over which the men could go, and that the side of the rock to the battery appeared practicable. Trusting to the gallantry of the people with me, I determined to try it; and from the men getting on shore, there was not a halt till we had possession of it. It was stormed under a heavy fire of musketry; the enemy did not leave the fort till we were within a few paces of them, and they even threw stones at us, when we were too much under the fort for their fire to reach us. It is due to Lieutenant Borrowes of H.M. 41st regiment, and Lieutenant Keele R.N., to say they were in first. I now felt secure of the place, and after waiting till the men had recovered from the exertion, and to get them together, they marched down along the works, and cleared all before them. On marching through the town it was, as usual, deserted, except by a great many women. The emptiness of the houses shewed every preparation had been made, if the place was captured, to prevent our getting any property. I enclose a return of the guns taken, as also the ordnance stores; the quantities of the latter are immense, kept in a stockade about half a mile up the hill, and a regular manufactory to make the powder. Our loss has hecn comparatively small – seven Killed and fourteen wounded. In this immense place, with so many facilities to escape, I cannot guess what the enemy’s loss may have been; but from the prisoners, of whom we have a great many, and from other sources, it must have been great; as allowing that two-thirds of the number reported were within this place at the attack, there, must have been between three and four thousand.”

The ordnance and stores captured at Martaban consisted of sixteen guns of various calibre, one hundred wall-pieces, five hundred muskets, seven thousand round shot, one thousand five hundred grape, one hundred thousand musket balls, nine thousand rounds of lead, twenty thousand flints, ten thousand musket cartridges, six thousand ditto for wall-pieces, twenty-six thousand five hundred pounds of loose gun-powder, ten thousand pounds of saltpetre, and five thousand pounds of sulphur. The Hon. Company’s gun-vessel Phaëton was found at this place, with her crew in irons. Her commander had put into Martaban by mistake, and was then a prisoner at Ava.

The loss sustained by the naval detachment was two men killed, one dangerously wounded, and three severely. In 