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Updated: May 24, 2025
When Fairburn learnt that his brig had not arrived in port, though she had been spoken in Boston Deeps by another collier which was returning to the Tyne, his heart misgave him. There had been a bad storm on the coast; it seemed only too likely that the Ouseburn Lassie had gone down in it!
"Who knows," said the good woman, "whether the same Frenchman may not still be on the watch, and seize the Ouseburn Lassie and her cargo; and, worse than all, my dear boy on board of her?" Her husband was not without his fears either, but George laughed at the notion of capture by a French vessel. "I'll go and have a talk with old Abbott, the skipper," he said, "and see what he thinks about it."
"I do, if there comes along a Frenchy who won't leave us alone," the old fellow replied, "leastways if she isn't too big a craft for us altogether." The evening was coming in, the town of Yarmouth faintly visible through the haze, when suddenly the crew of the Ouseburn Lassie became aware of a big vessel in the offing.
At length, months afterwards, they learnt in a casual way that a collier had been captured off Yarmouth by a French privateer, about the time the Ouseburn Lassie was making her trip; at least that was the construction the Yarmouth salts who saw the affair from the shore put upon the movements of the two vessels. So a ray of hope came to Fairburn and his wife.
When week after week passed without news it seemed more and more likely that the vessel had foundered in the gale. News of captures by French privateers usually filtered through sooner or later; but for long there were no tidings of the Ouseburn Lassie. The Blacketts did what they could to console the bereaved parents, but father and mother would not be comforted.
As one of the workmen has since described the circumstance—“She couldn’t keep her jack-head in water: all the enginemen in the neighbourhood were tried, as well as Crowther of the Ouseburn, but they were clean bet.” The engine had been fruitlessly pumping for nearly twelve months, and began to be spoken of as a total failure.
Hardly had he landed at that port when he ran across the old skipper of the Ouseburn Lassie. The worthy fellow did not at first recognize the schoolboy he had known in the sturdy handsome young fellow wearing a cavalry lieutenant's uniform, and he was taken aback when George accosted him with a hearty "How goes it, old friend? How goes it with you?"
The Dene, together with the Armstrong Park near it, lies on the course of the Ouseburn, which is here a bright and sparkling stream, very different from the appearance it presents by the time it empties its murky waters into the Tyne.
Quickly the big vessel overhauled the collier brig, and signals were made to pull down her flag, whereupon the Englishman grunted. Within a minute a puff was seen, and a round shot whizzed close past the Ouseburn Lassie's bows. "Give them a reply!" George urged in great excitement. "Wait a bit, my lad," and the skipper bided his time.
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