1810	Phipps and Barbier-de-Séville	241

Amazone, the French acknowledged only one man killed and none wounded.

Having on board the Donegal some of Colonel Congreve's rockets, Captain Malcolm, the same evening, sent the boats, under the orders of Lieutenant Joseph Needham Tayler, to try their effect upon the two French frigates. Although, at daylight on the 16th, the latter was observed to be aground, and one, the Eliza, to heel considerably, neither frigate, according to the French accounts ; sustained any injury from the rockets. Both frigates afterwards got afloat ; and on the night of the 27th, just as Captains Malcolm and Grant were meditating to send in a fire-ship, the Amazone gave them the slip, and, before the dawn of day on the 28th, was safe at anchor in the port of Havre. The Eliza was watched with increased attention, and on the 6th of December was attacked by a bomb-vessel. This compelled the frigate to move further in ; and she eventually got aground. Here the Eliza lay a wreck until the night of the 23d, when the Diana sent her boats, under the command of Lieutenant Thomas Rowe, and effectually destroyed her.

On the 15th of November, at a little before midnight, the British 14-gun brig-sloop Phipps, Captain Christopher Bell, standing across from the Downs to the coast of France, fell in with and chased a French lugger-privateer ; who led the Phipps close under Calais, and so near in-shore, that the brig was obliged, although firing grape-shot into the lugger, to discontinue the chase. Observing, while in chase of this lugger, two others lying to windward, Captain Bell considered that, by beating up inshore of them, the Phipps might escape their notice until far enough to fetch them. This the Phipps did, and at 5 a.m. on the 16th closed and commenced an action with one of the luggers. For a quarter of an hour the lugger maintained an incessant fire of musketry, and appeared determined to run on shore. As the only means of frustrating this design, especially as the brig was already in three and a half fathoms' water, the Phipps ran alongside of her antagonist and poured in her broadside; under the smoke of which, Lieutenant Robert Tryon, assisted by master's mate Patrick Wright, and Mr. Peter Geddes the boatswain, at the head of a party of seamen, boarded, and in a few minutes carried, the logger; which proved to be the Barbier-de-Séville, a perfectly new vessel, two days from Boulogne, mounting 16 guns, with 60 men, commanded by François Brunet.

The loss sustained by the Phipps amounted to one seaman killed, and Lieutenant Tryon, the gallant leader of the boarding party, dangerously wounded. But the loss on the part of the privateer was much more severe, she having had six men killed and 11 wounded, including among the latter every one of her officers except the second captain. The effect of the well directed fire of the Phipps upon the hull of the Barbier-de-Séville

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