as many 18 or 24 pounder carronades on the quarterdeck and forecastle, as gave her 42 or 44 guns in the whole, with a complement of 261 men and boys, lost eight men killed, and nine wounded, some of them badly. The Hussar, whose 24 maindeck guns were long 9-pounders, exclusive of six 18-pounder carronades and four long sixes on the quarterdeck and forecastle, total 34 guns, with a complement of 193 men and boys, lost only three men wounded. With respect to damages, the latter ship had her standing and running rigging much cut, and three shot-holes in the fore, and one in the mainmast.

The Hussar alone, as a regular man of war, was more than a match for the two captured store-ships ; and they and their three consorts were of no greater force, however formidable in appearance, than a British 18-pounder 36 and a 28-gun frigate would, at any time, have gladly encountered.

The Prévoyante, and Raison were purchased by government, and fitted out at Halifax, Nova-Scotia. They only remained, however, as cruising ships until their arrival in England in 1799. The Prévoyante measured 803 tons, and, until subsequently restored to her original employment of a store-ship, was registered as a 36-gun frigate ; not in Steel, for he classes her as a 40, but in the books of the navy. If we look, for a moment, at the Prévoyante's establishment of guns, as by Admiralty-order of August 17, 1795, we shall find that this "36-gun frigate", was, in more than one instance, an anomaly of her day.

Suppose the captain of the Prévoyante, having taken a French frigate, were to state, as others had done before him, that his ship was " of 36 guns," would not the French officers consider the discrepancy as too gross to be other than a typographical error - a substitution of a 3 for a 5 ?

On the 25th of May the British 16-gun ship-sloop Thorn, Captain Robert Waller Otway, being on the Windward-Island station, fell in with, and, after a spirited action of 35 minutes, during which the enemy was repulsed in two attempts to board, captured the 18-gun ship-corvette Courier-National, commanded by a lieutenant de vaisseau.

The Thorn, whose guns were 6-pounders, with a crew on board of 80 men and boys, had only five men wounded ; while the loss of the Courier-National, whose guns were 8 and 6 pounders, with a crew of 119 men and boys, amounted to seven killed and 20 wounded.