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After visiting Cadiz and Gibraltar, we were on our way home, just entering the chops of the Channel, after being kept at sea by calms and contrary winds for three weeks or more, when a frigate hove in sight and hoisted English colours. She made her number, and we knew her to be the thirty-two gun frigate Venus. Captain Faulknor, who commanded her, came on board, and we soon heard the news.
At length Faulknor, impatient of delay, and disregarding the disparity of force, closed upon her, and jumped on board at the head of his men. To his astonishment he found that she was a Dutch frigate, quietly pursuing her way; and as Holland was at peace with England, equally unexpecting and unprepared for an attack.
This inveteracy against married officers seems strange in one who had committed the same crime himself; yet he constantly persisted in calling officers who married moon-struck, and appears at all times to have regarded matrimony in the service as little short of personal ruin. On the passage out, a curious circumstance occurred to the Zebra frigate, under command of the gallant Robert Faulknor.
Bitterly to my disappointment, before I had finished it, I heard the boatswain's shrill call summoning all hands on deck to heave up the anchor and make sail. Placing the half-finished letter in my bag, which I had brought from the Jane, I followed my shipmates. We sailed in company with the Venus, Captain Faulknor, and stood down Channel in search of French cruisers.
At Dunkirk Monitors for bombarding Ostend: Marshal Soult, Lord Clive, Prince Eugene, General Sraufurd, M-24 and M-26. For operating off Ostend Swift, Faulknor, Matchless, Mastiff and Afridi. The British destroyers Mentor, Lightfoot, Zubian and French torpedo boats Lestin, Capitaine Mehl, Francis Garnier, Roux and Boucier to accompany the monitors.
The captain would remain in a boat all night, and think himself amply repaid if he obtained only one good man. From the Nore, she returned to Spithead, and thence sailed on a cruize, in company with the Venus, Captain Jonathan Faulknor, having now a full proportion of good seamen, though she was still short of her complement, and none of the crew had ever seen a shot fired.
He is now Master of the Defence, and his captain speaks in the highest terms of him; and it is a tribute due to the memory of Captain Faulknor, whose certificate of that matchless service is enclosed, and to the gallantry of his officers and crew, to state the claims of Mr. White to your Lordship, who is the protector of us all."
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