1809	Light Squadrons and Single Ships	196

and then proceeded with the gig in search of the gun-boat. Lieutenant Burns soon got alongside the brig, and found a body of soldiers drawn up on board to defend her. In the face of a heavy fire of musketry from these, the British boarded, and after a smart struggle on her decks, carried the vessel. The cable was then cut by one of the seamen left in the launch for that purpose ; but not till he had been wounded in the head by the mate of the brig, and had killed him with a blow of his axe. Captain Willoughby having in the meantime approached so near to the innermost battery as to be hailed by one of the sentries, the alarm became general, and the batteries opened their fire.

Owing to her being firmly moored on the shore, and having her yards and topmasts down, there was no possibility of getting off the brig. Finding this to be the case, Captain Willoughby gave orders to take out the prisoners, all of whom had been secured in the hold, and burn the vessel. As, however, the prisoners, many of whom were wounded, could not in the emergency of the moment be removed, the brig was abandoned ; and the three boats, taking the lugger in tow, carried her out, under a heavy fire from the batteries on both sides of the river. To enable them to distinguish their object in the dark, the Frenchmen on shore kept continually throwing up false fires of a superior description, which illuminated the whole river.

Under all these circumstances, it was rather surprising that no greater loss was sustained by Captain Willoughby and his party, than one man killed in the launch by a 24-pound shot which took his head off, and another wounded with the loss of his arm by a grape-shot ; particularly as the lugger was much cut up in her rigging. The principal advantage derived from this attack was the evidence it afforded, of the feasibility of cutting out a vessel even from a place so strongly protected by nature and art as Rivière-Noire. And, had the gun-boat been found when the boats first entered, there cannot be a doubt that she world have shared the fate of the lugger. On clearing the entrance of the river, the lugger and the boats were met by the Otter's cutter, under Lieutenant Thomas Lamb Polden Laugharne; who on witnessing the heavy firing, had, with a commendable zeal, pushed off to render all the assistance in his power.

The harbour or bay of St.-Paul at Isle Bourbon having long been the rendezvous of French cruizers on the Indian station, and, in particular, having, as has just appeared, afforded shelter to the Caroline and her two valuable prizes, Commodore Josias Rowley, of the 64-gun ship Raisonable, the commanding officer of the British force cruising off the isles of France and Bourbon, concerted with Lieutenant-colonel Henry S. Keating, commanding the troops at the adjacent small island of Rodriguez recently taken possession of by the British, a plan for carrying, first, the batteries that defended, and then the shipping within, the road of St. Paul.

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