Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v4p2.djvu/67

 time several signals were exchanged between them, from which, and their endeavouring to avoid him, no doubt remained of their being an enemy’s squadron, Captain Graham despatched Mr. Johnson, then in charge of the Fortitude, to Lisbon and Cadiz with the intelligence, keeping to the eastward himself, in hopes of meeting with an English force in pursuit of them. A few hours subsequent to their parting company, the Vestal captured the French privateer brig Intrepide, and Mr. Johnson, by practising a bold ruse de guerre, saved the Fortitude from being again taken by le Dauphin ketch, which vessel approached so near that her guns and men were distinctly seen from the deck without a glass, but soon hauled to the wind and made off, on seeing her late, but unrecognized, prize, although without a gun on board, brace up, make sail, and stand towards her. When the Dauphin first hove in sight, the Fortitude was under easy sail, in order to allow the recaptured brig, then in sight astern, to come up and keep company. Had the former been taken, the latter would, in all probability, have shared the same fate.

After delivering his despatches to the flag-officer in the Tagus, Mr. Johnson proceeded to England, and on his arrival joined, for a short time, the Port Mahon sloop. Commander Villiers F. Hatton. On the 1st Aug, 1810, we find him sailing for the coast of Norway, in the Pallas 32, to which ship Captain Graham had been appointed on paying off the Vestal. Whilst on that station, he commanded a boat at the capture of four Danish privateers and several sail of merchantmen. One of the former he conducted to Leith Roads, where he arrived the same night that the Pallas, then under the command of an acting captain, was wrecked near Dunbar, as stated in p. 69 of Suppl. Part II.

Mr. Johnson next followed Captain Graham into the Southampton 32, fitting out at Portsmouth for the West India station; and from that ship removed with him into the Alcmene 38, destined to the Adriatic, where he bore a part in several boat actions. On one of those occasions, a Franco-Venetian trabacolo, of four guns and thirty men, was captured near the island of Lessina, after a most sanguinary