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Updated: October 4, 2025
Subsequently the right flank of the Battalion was not only enfiladed but exposed to fire from their rear. The officers at this deadly point were Lieutenants H.D. Thewlis, W.G. Freemantle and F.C. Palmer. Palmer was badly wounded. Thewlis, a keen subaltern and expert in scientific agriculture, refused to retire, and was killed.
Tell the surgeon to make haste and get his instruments. I know I must lose my right arm, so the sooner it is off the better." The spirit which he displayed in jumping up the ship's side astonished everybody. Freemantle had been severely wounded in the right arm soon after the admiral. He was fortunate enough to find a boat on the beach, and got instantly to his ship.
The first ship we came to was the `Seahorse. Her captain's wife, Mrs Freemantle, was on board, but he was with the boats, and no one could tell whether he was alive or dead. "`No, no, exclaimed the admiral; `I can give the poor lady no tidings of her husband; she shall not see me in this state. Pull to another ship.
By God! they call him Joseph Surface!" At Valenciennes, where there was a review and a great dinner, the Duchess arrived with an old and ugly lady-in-waiting, and the Duke of Wellington found himself in a difficulty. "Who the devil is to take out the maid of honour?" he kept asking; but at last he thought of a solution. "Damme, Freemantle, find out the mayor and let him do it."
The plan was to make a dash for the mole, and then to fight our way forward along it, we fully believing that the enemy would run as soon as we appeared. When the leading boats, under the command of Captains Freemantle and Bowen, had got within half gunshot of the mole head, the enemy took the alarm, and immediately opened fire on us from forty heavy guns. A hot fire it was, I assure you.
It was the beginning of the monsoon, and we went bowling down towards Port Darwin, a crowd of Malay proas in our wake. However, the poor beggar thought he was going to die, and one night he told me his story. He was an escaped convict from Freemantle, Western Australia. He had, with others, been taken up to the northern coast to do some Government work, and had escaped in the dingey.
Although exposing himself with entire indifference to the heavy fire, he advised Colonel Freemantle, as that officer states, to shelter himself, saying: "This has been a sad day for us, colonel, a sad day. But we can't expect always to gain victories."
Tuesday, January 21st. The westerly wind is bringing a fleet of ships into the bay. To-day Colonel Freemantle came on board to return my visit on the part of the Governor, and to read to me, by the latter's direction, a memorandum of the conversation which had passed between us on Sunday. I assented to the correctness of the Governor's memorandum.
Nelson had with him only his ten bargemen, Captain Freemantle, and his coxswain, John Sykes, an old and faithful follower, who twice saved the life of his admiral by parrying the blows that were aimed at him, and at last actually interposed his own head to receive the blow of a Spanish sabre, which he could not by any other means avert; thus dearly was Nelson beloved.
In the affray, he says, "I was boarded in my barge with its common crew of ten men, coxswain, Captain Freemantle, and myself, by the commander of the gunboats; the Spanish barge rowed twenty-six oars, besides officers, thirty men in the whole. This was a service hand-to-hand with swords, in which my coxswain, John Sykes, now no more, twice saved my life.
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