1809	Amethyst and Niemen	157

On the 20th Lieutenant Elms Steele, with a party of seamen and marines, landed and destroyed the guns at Baigno, and captured a small vessel laden with merino wool, which had run in there for security, and was from San-Andero bound to Bayonne. In the mean time Lieutenant of marines John Fennele, accompanied by Mr. John Elliott the purser, and a boat's crew, ascended the mountain and destroyed the signal-posts. On the same evening, also, Lieutenant Pearson, with the officers and men who were with him at Lequito, took possession of the batteries of the town of Paissance, without opposition, and destroyed the guns ; the small French force stationed at all the above places, retiring as the British approached.

On the 5th of April, at 11 a.m., the Cordouan lighthouse bearing east by north distant 42 leagues, the British 18-pounder 36-gun frigate Amethyst, still commanded by Captain Michael Seymour, standing about a point free on the larboard tack with the wind at east, and having in her company, within signal distance to the northward, or nearly astern, the 18-pounder 36-gun frigate Emerald, Captain Frederick Lewis Maitland, descried, in the east-south-east, a ship steering to the westward ; and which, on discovering the two frigates, hauled up to the south-south-east. This was the French 40-gun frigate Niemen, Captain Jean- Henri-Joseph Dupotet, two days from Verdon road, with six months' provisions and a quantity of naval stores on board, bound to the Isle of France.

Both British ships made all sail in chase, and at noon the Niemen was about half topsails down from the deck of the Amethyst. The chase continued all the afternoon ; so little, however, to the advantage of the Amethyst, although a much better sailer than her consort, that at sunset the line of the Niemen's taffrail was all that could be seen from the lower part of the Amethyst's main rigging, bearing a point and a half on her weather or larboard bow. At 7 h. 20 m., which was just as it was getting dark, the Amethyst lost sight, both of the Emerald that was astern, and the Niemen that was ahead of her.

Concluding that the French frigate, on getting rid of her pursuers, would resume her course to the westward, Captain Seymour, at 9 p.m., bore up to south-west. At 9 h. 40 m. p.m., the wind then blowing in squalls from the east-north-east, the Amethyst discovered, on her weather beam, the ship she was in search of ; and who now, as rightly conjectured by Captain Seymour, was steering to the westward. The Amethyst lost no time in giving chase ; and the Niemen, having only in view to execute her mission, wore and made all sail with the wind upon the larboard quarter, steering about south by west. At 11 h. 30 m, p.m. the Amethyst began firing her bow-chasers, and was fired at in return by the stern-guns of the Niemen. At 1 h. 15 m. a.m. on the 6th the Amethyst closed upon the Niemen's larboard quarter, and opened her starboard broadside. In return, the Niemen