1811 - Alacrity and Abelle

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1811 Light Squadrons and Single Ships 366

wounded ; but the account, as we have stated it, may be depended upon as correct. The Abeille, whose crew amounted to at least 130 men and boys, lost, according to the acknowledgement of her officers, seven seamen and marines killed and 12 wounded. Neither brig, as far as it appears, had any mast shot away ; although both, particularly the Alacrity, had received damage in them, as well as in the rigging, sails, and hull.

Here were two brigs, when the action began, about equally matched, and, when it ended, nearly equal sufferers in point of numerical loss : a circumstance that renders the termination of it, by the capture of one of them, so much the more extraordinary. It was, however, in numbers merely, that the loss came so near to an equality; as the Alacrity's almost unparalleled loss of officers has already in part shown, and as the further explanation, which our duty calls upon us to give, will completely establish. Out of her full net complement of 120 men and boys, the Alacrity sailed upon her last cruise with only 101 men and 13 boys. Falling in with and detaining a Greek ship, rather largely manned, Captain Palmer sent on board his second lieutenant, Mr. Alexander Martin, a skilful and zealous officer, and 13 able seamen, with orders to carry the ship to Malta. This was in the beginning of May. Thus left with all her boys, and with very little more than four fifths of her men, the Alacrity encountered the Abeille in the manner already stated. In the early part of the action, Captain Palmer received a lacerated wound in his hand and fingers, and went below, and remained below. The command, in consequence, devolved upon Lieutenant Rees, and a more efficient officer could not be found. Presently Lieutenant Rees had his leg badly shot, and was borne to a carronade-slide. There he sat, persisting in not being carried below, and animating the men by every means in his power, until a second shot laid him dead on the deck. His place was filled by Mr. Laing, the master. While he was in command, the master's mate, Mr. Warren, received his mortal wound ; and at length Mr. Laing got wounded also, by a contusion in the upper part of the thigh, and he went below.

The men on the quarterdeck now called out, that there was no officer to command them. Instantly James Flaxman, the boatswain, stepped aft, who, although he had received a painful wound in the left arm by a nail and been knocked into the waist by a splinter, was again at his post on the forecastle cheering the people. Here, again, all might have gone on well, in spite of the disheartening effect produced upon the crew by the absence of their finger-wounded captain. Although his hand had been dressed, the latter was so stomach-sick, or so sick somewhere else, that he remained below ; and, whether it was that a shot, which about this time wounded the surgeon in the cockpit, alarmed the captain in the cabin, or that the latter began to

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