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The Algerine batteries were fully manned; the mole, moreover, was crowded with troops. With singular temerity, they fired no gun as the ships came on, thus relieving the most anxious of Exmouth's preoccupations concerning the difficulties before him; fearing, seemingly, that, if otherwise received, the prey might turn and escape.
His son, Captain Pellew, Lord Exmouth's great-grandfather, served in the navy during the war of the succession. A very fine portrait of him remains. Humphry Pellew, the grandfather, was an extensive merchant. He held a large property in shipping, and traded chiefly to America, where he had purchased a valuable tobacco plantation of 2,000 acres, in Kent Island, Maryland.
The arsenal and storehouses and all the ships in the port were burned, and on the next day the dey accepted Exmouth's terms; peace was signed on the 30th, the principal terms being the abolition of Christian slavery, and the delivery of all slaves to Exmouth on the following day.
In accordance with these terms of peace, all the Christian slaves were collected next day and delivered up. Sixteen hundred and forty-two were freed on this occasion, and sent on board the fleet. Counting those freed but a short time before, through Lord Exmouth's influence along the Barbary coasts, the total number delivered amounted to above 3000.
A member of the House of Commons, stirred to indignation by the news from Bona, got up and moved for copies of Lord Exmouth's treaties with Algiers for Naples and Sardinia, and all correspondence connected therewith.
This period began soon after Doria's disastrous campaign at Jerba, when the battle of Lepanto had destroyed the prestige of the Ottoman navy, but increased if possible the terror of the ruthless Corsairs. No really serious attempt was made to put down the scourge of the Mediterranean between 1560 and Lord Exmouth's victory in 1816.
McDonell had to be recalled, and the Dey as usual had his own way. Nothing but downright conquest could stop the plague, and that final measure was reserved for another nation than the English. Playfair, 256. Lord Exmouth's Despatch, August 26, 1816. See also the American Consul Shaler's Report to his Government, September 13th, quoted by Playfair, 269-72.
He gave the spectacles to his valued friend, the late gallant Sir Richard Keats, who caused their history to be engraven on them, and directed, that when he died, they should be restored to Lord Exmouth's family, to be kept as a memorial of his extraordinary preservation.
Thus opened an engagement which is memorable among the attacks of fleets upon land fortifications, and which fully justified Lord Exmouth's opinion that 'nothing can resist a line-of-battle ship's fire. The Algerine tactics were to allow the British squadron to come to an anchor without molestation, and to board the vessels from their galleys while the British crews were aloft furling sails, for which purpose they had thirty-seven galleys fully manned waiting inside the mole.
The result was, that Sir Israel Pellew, with Captains Brisbane, Pechell, Dundas, Warde, and others, went on shore; and the Dey agreed to appoint an ambassador, who should proceed first to Constantinople for the sanction of the Porte, and thence to England to treat on Lord Exmouth's proposal.
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