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Updated: June 24, 2025
'Kill me, if you will, replied Keppel, pointing through the open window to his squadron riding in the roadstead, 'and there are ships enough to burn your city and provide me with a glorious funeral pile. Keppel's firmness had the result of checking the Algerian piracies for a time, but during the long wars between the Powers which were shortly resumed, these were overlooked in the press of matters of more urgency, and it was only with the return of a permanent and general peace, as already noted, that the Powers had leisure to turn their attention to a state of things in the Mediterranean which had long been intolerable.
Land and sea defence of south and south-east at discretion of yourself, Domville and Beresford. By some miracle, the Keppel's Head, perhaps the most famous naval hostelry in the south of England, had escaped the shells from the airships, and so General French had made it his headquarters for the time being.
It is now two years since I left Singapore, 'the boundary of civilization. I have been out of the civilized world, living in a demi-civilized state, peaceably, innocently, and usefully. "Feb. 8th. After ten days' delay at the mouth of the river, got out." Captain Keppel's voyage in the Dido with Mr. Brooke to Sarawak. Chase of three piratical prahus. Boat expedition.
He had just time to wire to Merrill to meet him at the "Keppel's Head" for dinner and catch the new 4.55 express for Portsmouth. Merrill was waiting for him in the smoking-room. As they shook hands, he said in the quiet tone which is characteristic of his profession: "Your wire was rather sudden news, Professor. I thought you were somewhere in the Baltic.
Unhappily, the Honourable Captain Keppel's ship, the Raleigh, on her way to Hong-Kong, struck on a rock and was totally wrecked. Sir Michael, however, gave him command of the Alligator, and placed under him the Bittern sloop and the hired steamers, Hong-Kong and Sir Charles Forbes, attached to the Raleigh as tenders.
Many junks were given to the flames, and five were carried off under the teeth of the Fatshan populace; but Keppel's force was too small to hold that town and put it to the ransom, so the worn-out, but still enthusiastic force, retired to join the main body under Sir Michael Seymour, who was satisfied that he had achieved all that was necessary or prudent with his squadron.
From the front of the well-known inn, the "Keppel's Head," the portrait of the brave old admiral, which I always looked at with awe and admiration, thinking what a great man he must have been, gazed sternly down on us as we made our way along the Common Hard of Portsea towards the water's edge.
All I then knew was that brother Jack was going for a sailor aboard of a man-of-war. Father and Jack were just shoving off, when two persons who had come out of the "Keppel's Head" were seen hurrying down the Hard with cases and packages in their hands and under their arms.
With this exception the status quo remained much as before, although one of the Dutch ships sank next day; yet the British loss, 104 killed and 339 wounded, was nearly as great as in Keppel's action, where thirty ships fought on each side, or in Rodney's of April 17th, 1780, where the British had twenty sail; greater than with Graves off the Chesapeake, and, in proportion, fully equal to the sanguinary conflicts between Suffren and Hughes in the East Indies.
It is clear, therefore, that when the continent was first peopled, the natives of Sydney or Hunter's River could not have come round the north-east coast by Keppel's or Harvey's bays, and retained a ceremony that is there lost; neither could the Murrumbidgee or southern districts of New South Wales, have been peopled from Port Phillip, or from South Australia, or by tribes passing up the Murray for the same reason.
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