1815	Light Squadrons and Single Ships	384

to be ready on the emergency (there being, as already stated, no more than 81 such vessels in commission), the Penguin was to be manned with equal recklessness about consequences. In respect to captain and officers generally, the Penguin might compete with any brig of her class; but, as to men, when she did get them all on board, which was not until June, 1814, they were, with the exception, probably, of not being disaffected, a worse crew than even the Epervier's. Her 17 boys, poor little fellows, might do very well six or seven years to come. Her men, her misnamed "British seamen," consisted, except a portion of her petty officers, of very old and very young individuals ; the latter pressed men, the former discharged ineffectives. Among the whole number, thus obtained, 12 only had ever been in action.

One might suppose, that a vessel so " manned," especially after a knowledge of the fact, that four of the same description of sloops had been captured each by an American sloop of the same nominal, whatever may have been her real force, would have been sent to escort some convoy from the Downs along the English coast ; a service in which, as against the pickaroons that usually infested the Channel, the appearance of a force was almost as effective as its reality. Oh, no. The aforesaid emergency required, that the Penguin should be sent to the Cape of Good Hope, to traverse the very track in which the Java had met, and been captured by the Constitution. Accordingly, in the month of September, the Penguin sailed for her distant destination. While on the Cape station, she lost several of her men by sickness ; and, previously to her being despatched by Vice-admiral Charles Tyler, the commander-in-chief at the Cape, in pursuit of the American privateer ship, Young-Wasp, the Penguin received on board from the Medway 74, as a loan for that special service, 12 marines: thus making her complement 105 men and 17 boys, or 122 in the whole.

Had the vessel in sight to windward been rigged with three masts instead of two, and had she, on her near approach, proved by her signals to be a British cruiser, Captain Biddle might have marked her down in his log as a " frigate," and have made off with all the canvass he could spread. Had the ship, nevertheless, overtaken the Hornet, and been, in reality, a trifle superior in force to her, Captain Biddle, we have no doubt, would have exhausted his eloquence in lauding the blessings of peace, before he tried the effect of his artillery in a struggle for the honours of war. However, the vessel approaching was evidently a brig ; and the utmost extent of a brig-sloop's force was thoroughly known.

When she first descried the Hornet in the north-west by west, the Penguin was steering to the eastward, with the wind fresh from the south-south-west. With all the promptitude that was to be expected from the gallant first lieutenant of the Cerberus