1810	Entreprenante and Four French Privateers	243

loss to the cutter of one man killed and four wounded. The Entreprenante now manned her starboard sweeps, and, getting round, brought her larboard guns to bear. With two broadsides from these, she compelled three of her antagonists to sheer off.

All the cutter's canister-shot and musket-balls were now expended ; but at this moment two well-directed broadsides, doubled-shotted, carried away the foremast and bowsprit of the most formidable of the privateers. Grown desperate by a resistance so unexpected, the Frenchmen made a third attempt to board the British vessel, but met with no better success than before ; although in their effort to repulse them, the Entreprenante had two of her larboard guns dismounted, and experienced some additional loss. The fire of the privateers now beginning to slacken, the cutter's people gave three cheers, and, with two guns double-shotted, poured a destructive raking fire into the vessel that was dismasted. This decided the business ; and, at 2 h. 30 m. p.m., the two greatest sufferers by the contest were towed to the shore by boats. The Entreprenante continued sending her shot after her flying foes until 3 p.m., when they got beyond her reach. The castle of Faro at this time fired a few ineffectual shots at the British cutter.

Notwithstanding the length and severity of this action, and the more than double force opposed to the Entreprenante, the latter escaped with no greater loss than one man killed and 10 wounded. The loss on the part of her opponents could only be gathered from rumour, and that made it as many as 81 in killed and wounded ; not an improbable amount, considering how numerously the privateers were manned, and how well the cutter plied her cannon and musketry. On his return to Gibraltar, Lieutenant Williams, and the officers and crew of the Entreprenante, received the public acknowledgment (sic) of the commanding officer on the station, Commodore Charles Vinicombe Penrose. Some other marks of favour were conferred upon the lieutenant ; but the reward the most coveted, and, considering that a particle less of energy and perseverance might have lost the king's cutter, no one can say, a reward not fully merited, promotion, appears to have been withheld. We judge so, because, according to the admiralty navy-list, Lieutenant Williams was not made a commander until the 27th of August, 1814.

On the 7th of December, after dark, the British 10-gun brig-sloop Rinaldo (eight 18-pounder carronades and two sixes), Captain James Anderson, while cruising off Dover with the wind from the westward, discovered to windward, and immediately chased, two large armed luggers standing towards the English coast. The two French privateers, as they proved to be, the moment they saw the Rinaldo outside of them, endeavoured to pass her and effect their escape over to their own coast. One of them, the Maraudeur, of 14 guns and 85 men, after sustaining a running fight of several minutes' duration, attempted to cross the

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