1812	Light Squadrons and Single Ships	72

to do this more effectually, a boat was sent from one or the other of them every night, to row guard near the shore.

On the 12th of August a boat, with midshipman (or rather lieutenant, for he had been promoted since the 21st of the preceding march, but had not yet received his appointment) Michael Dwyer and seven seamen, departed from the Minstrel upon this service. Considering that, if he could take the battery on the beach, he might succeed in capturing the privateers, the midshipman questioned the Spaniards, who came off in boats from the town ; and they all agreed in the relation that the French had retreated, leaving but 30 men in the battery and 20 in the castle. Relying upon the tried courage and steadiness of his seven men, Mr. Dwyer resolved, notwithstanding the numbers of the enemy, to attempt carrying the battery by surprise. With this view, at 9 h. 30 m. p.m., he and his little party landed at a spot about three miles westward of the town ; but scarcely had they done so, than they were challenged by a French sentinel. The midshipman, with much presence of mind, answered in Spanish that they were peasants, The British were suffered to advance, and, arriving at the battery on the beach, attacked it without hesitation. After a smart struggle, the garrison, consisting not of 20, but of 80 Genoese abandoned the battery to Mr. Dwyer and his seven men.

The British were a few minutes only in possession, before they were surrounded by 200 French soldiers. Against these Mr. Dwyer and his seven men defended themselves until one of the latter was killed, the midshipman shot through the shoulder, and a seaman through the eye, and all their ammunition expended. The moment the firing ceased the French rushed upon the garrison with their bayonets. Mr. Dwyer was too weak, from loss of blood ; to sustain a hand-to-hand fight ; and, after he had been stabbed in 17 places, and all the men except one severely wounded, the French recovered possession of the battery. The gallant fellow who was wounded in the eye, on recovering from the stupefaction caused by the wound in his head, deliberately took his handkerchief from his neck, and, binding it over the wound, said, "Though I have lost one eye, I have still one left, and I'll fight till I lose that too."

The admiration of Captain Foubert and his troops, a detachment from the 117th regiment of voltigeurs, at the invincible courage of the little band of British, was unbounded ; and when the latter, in their wounded state, were conveyed to the headquarters of General Goudin, the French commanding officer in this quarter, the same benevolence and solicitude were shown to them by him and his suite. The general sent an invitation to Captain Peyton to visit him on shore, and receive in person as well his brave boat's crew, as the congratulations of the general and the other French officers on having such men under his

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