Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v4p2.djvu/86

 The launch had neither sail, bread, nor water, on board. There was a compass; and for sails the officers displayed their shirts, and the seamen their frocks. One of the officers put on board the Danish brig was Lieutenant Little, whoso attempt to save more of his shipmates was unhappily frustrated by violent and adverse winds.

In Jan. 1807, Lieutenant Little was appointed first of the Revenge 74, Captain Sir John Gore, under whom he served “as an able, zealous, and meritorious officer,” until Aug. 1808. His next appointment was, in the course of the latter month, to the command of the Firm gun-brig, on the Guernsey station, where, under the orders of Commodore D’Auvergne, the nominal Duke de Bouillon, he appears to have been for some time employed in afording succour to persons secretly communicating with the partisans of the house of Bourbon. In Jan. 1800, he captured and destroyed three French vessels, on the coast of Normandy. On the 20th April 1810, the boats of the Firm, in concert with those of the Surly cutter, and Sharpshooter gun-brig, boarded and brought off from the mouth of Piron, where she had ran on shore, l’Alcide privateer, under a heavy fire of musquetry from upwards of 400 troops. In the performance of this service, which was very creditably performed under the direction of Sub-Lieutenant Hodgkin, of the Firm, that vessel had her second master killed, and boatswain’s mate wounded.

In July 1810, Lieutenant Little saved the life of a marine by jumping overboard in St. Hillier’s bay, Jersey. On the 12th Mar. 1811, he witnessed the capture of H.M. sloop Challenger, by a French frigate and an armed store-ship near Morlaix; but succeeded in effecting his own escape from the same enemy by beating to windward within a sunken reef. On the 28th of June following, being off Granville, in company with the Fylla 22, he attacked two praam brigs which had come out to drive away the boats employed in reconnoitring, and were unable to regain their port; but owing 