Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v4p2.djvu/296

  had a narrow escape, having parted one of her cables, and drifted close to the rocks under the Devil’s Bowling Green, where she rode with two cables an end, the offset from the rocks fortunately easing the strain.

Some months previous to this destructive storm, the garrison at Gibraltar had been, for the first time, afflicted with that dreadful scourge the yellow fever; and many families had embarked to escape the infection, which had only just begun to assume a milder character at the period of Mr. Woollnough’s arrival. During the continuance of the gale, the rain was incessant, and so heavy that many coffins buried in the red sands were exposed. After its abatement not a single case of fever occurred.

On the 8th April, while still detained with the prizes at Gibraltar, Mr. Woollnough had the mortification to see a French squadron from Toulon, consisting of eleven sail of the line, seven frigates, two brigs, and a store-ship, pass the Straits to the westward. Every eye was turned to the Mediterranean, in expectation of Lord Nelson and his squadron; but he not appearing. Lord Mark Kerr, of the Fisgard, then senior officer in the bay, immediately despatched a small fast-sailing vessel with the intelligence to his Lordship, while he himself watched the enemy until their arrival at Cadiz.

In the beginning of May, when Nelson also passed the rock, Mr. Woollnough was employed, together with the other prize-masters and their crews, in fitting out the Spanish frigate Amphitrite, captured by Sir Richard ;. Strachan, and commissioned, pro tempore, by Captain Robert Corbet, with whose successor, the Hon. Courtenay Boyle, he returned home early in Aug. 1805. On the 25th of that month, he rejoined the Agamemnon, off Ushant; which ship was shortly afterwards placed under the command of Captain Sir Edward Berry, to whose notice he appears to have been strongly recommended by his Norfolk connections.

On the 10th Oct. the Agamemnon, then off Cape Finisterre, on her way to join Lord Nelson, had a very narrow escape from the famous Rochefort squadron. Her 