1811	Light Squadrons and Single Ships	380

war of 1803, and presented to Jérôme Buonaparte on his being, appointed a capitaine de frégate. * Like most of these presented ships, the Pomone had been rather hastily run up, and, on being brought to England in September, 1812, was found defective and taken to pieces. The Persanne was not a ship calculated for the British navy : she was therefore sold to the Bey of Tunis.

Lieutenant Wilson, first of the Alceste, was promoted to the rank of commander on the 17th of September, 1812. The second lieutenant was James Montagu, and the acting third lieutenant, James Adair. Lieutenants Dashwood and Haye, first and second of the Active, were made commanders on the 19th of May, 1812. The officer, acting as third lieutenant of the Active, was Redmond Moriarty. The first lieutenant of the Unité was Joseph William Crabb, already named in these pages ; and who, to our great surprise, still appears with no higher rank than he held when the Unité captured the Persanne. Captain Chamberlayne, therefore, had some reason for dwelling upon the " extreme disappointment " it was to his officers, on finding, when the latter ship surrendered, that they had been opposed to a vessel of inferior force.

On the 26th of May, in the evening ; the 16-gun brig-sloop Sabine, Captain George Price, cruising on the Cadiz station, detached her boats, five in number, under the orders of Lieutenant William Usherwood, assisted by Lieutenant Patrick Finucane, and Mr. Thomas Settle the master, also by some of the warrant-officers and midshipmen, (we wish Captain Price had enabled us to give their names,) to attempt cutting out five French privateers at anchor in the port of Sabiona. They were small fast-sailing vessels, of two 4-pounders and 25 men each, and had been very destructive to the commerce on that part of the coast.

The boats entered the port ; and, although the privateers was moored under a battery, the attack had been planned with much judgment, and was executed with so much promptitude and gallantry, that each British boat succeeded in capturing a privateer, and that without the slightest loss. Two of the privateers were afterwards dragged on shore, by means of a hawser -; made fast to the lower gudgeon ; and, in repulsing the French : soldiers and crews with the cutlass, one British marine was wounded by a musket-ball. The three remaining privateers were brought safe off. Although the crews of the five private considerably outnumbered the whole complement of the Sabine and although Captain Price describes his first lieutenant, who headed the party that performed the exploit, as " an excellent officer," the name of William Usherwood still appears, among the lieutenants belonging to the British navy.

* See vol. iv., p. 205.

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