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Updated: May 31, 2025
Meanwhile the other two craft of which the skipper had spoken, and which had all the appearance of being Dutch Indiamen under the convoy of the frigate, had hauled their wind as soon as the action began, and were now some four miles dead to windward, heading about North-West, and cracking on with the evident intention of getting out of sight, if possible, before we could repair damages sufficiently to proceed in pursuit.
Of course you must remember that these were not great vessels with four masts like our old East Indiamen, but were long, high boats, worked by banks of oars, the shortest row being, of course, the lowest, nearest the water.
The frigate bore down, and hove to. The commodore of the India squadron went on board, when he found that she was cruising for some large Dutch store-ships and vessels armed en flute, which were supposed to have sailed from Java. In a quarter of an hour, she again made sail and parted company, leaving the Indiamen to secure their guns, and pursue their course.
We beat to quarters, and when everything was ready, and we were within a mile of the enemy, who had now thrown out the tricoloured flag, O'Brien ordered all the men aft on the quarter-deck, and addressed them: "Now, my men, you see that there are three privateers, and you also see that there are three Indiamen, which they have captured.
At length, after I had been aboard about half-an-hour, I was ready to return to our own ship; I therefore ordered two hands down into the boat alongside, and shoved off for the Europa, noting, with great satisfaction as I did so, that the breeze was fast dropping, and that the two Indiamen were still hull-up, not having made very much progress to windward during the time that I had been aboard the prize.
Well down to the southward there was a large square-rigged, three-masted vessel, fraternising with one of our finest West Indiamen. The stranger looked tall, grim, and dark, with his courses up, but his top-gallant sails and royals set.
What with being tired waiting so long for convoy, and the knowledge that arriving before the other West Indiamen would be very advantageous, I made up my mind that, instead of beating up into the bay again, I would run for England without protection, trusting to the fast sailing of my vessel and the guns which I had on board.
The Emiline, taken after a two days' chase by the Culloden, had been a British sloop of war: and the Bellone, taken by the Powerful and Rattlesnake, was added to the navy as a small-class frigate, and actually maintained a running fight with the seventy-four. The resemblance between ships of war and the larger Indiamen more than once deceived the enemy.
The Phoenicians in this particular the forerunners of the Greeks and of the Dutch and the English planted trading settlements in Cyprus and Crete, on the islands of the AEgean Sea, in southern Spain, and in North Africa. Tarshish was another of their Spanish settlements. "Ships of Tarshish," like the modern "East Indiamen," came to signify vessels capable of making long voyages.
He would have had no chance, however, with the Indiamen, whose officers were in a very combative mood. Not long before a very gallant action had been performed by a squadron of them in the Eastern seas indeed, no country ever possessed a body of officers in her mercantile marine equal to those of the Honourable East India Company. I heard all about the action on board the Cuffnells.
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