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Updated: July 19, 2025
In September, 1789, the Guardian, a forty-gun ship, under the command of Riou, then a lieutenant, left England for the one-year-old penal settlement in New South Wales. The little colony was in sore need of food almost starving, in fact and Riou's orders were to make all haste to his destination, calling at the Cape on the way to embark live stock and other supplies.
Very different were the feelings of Riou and Gallais. They did their utmost to engage me in conversation, to consult me about a hundred trifles, to ask me with the greatest deference what they ought to do in such and such cases, pressing close to me, trying every expedient to delay my departure.
She had, I think, nine feet of water in her when she anchored. The lower gun-deck served as a second bottom; it was stowed with a very great weight equally fore and aft. To this, and to the uncommon strength of it, Captain Riou ascribes his safety.
It is through this lady that we have been permitted to inspect the family papers relating to the life and death of Captain Riou. Dauphiny is one of the least visited of all the provinces of France. It occupies a remote corner of the empire, lying completely out of the track of ordinary tourists.
It is not necessary that we should describe this celebrated voyage, with which every boy is familiar its storms and hurricanes; the landings on islands where the white man's face had never been seen before; the visits to the simple natives of Huahine and Otaheite, then a little Eden; the perilous coasting along the North American seaboard to Behring's Straits, in search of the North-Western passage; and finally, the wintering of the ships at Owyhee, where Captain Cook met his cruel death, of which young Riou was a horror-struck spectator from the deck of the Resolution, on the morning of the 14th of February, 1779.
"They had no wish," they said, "to quit the British service; but they entreated that they might not be forced to fight against their own country." There was not in our whole navy a man who had a higher and more chivalrous sense of duty than Riou. Tears came into his eyes while the men were speaking.
The signal to prepare for action had been made early in the evening. All the captains retired to their respective ships, Riou excepted, who with Lord Nelson and Foley arranged the Order of Battle, and those instructions that were to be issued to each ship on the succeeding day.
He used to say, 'Close with a Frenchman, but out-manoeuvre a Russian." Nelson gave personal supervision to the general work of buoying the Northern Channel. On the morning of April 1st he made a final examination of the ground in the frigate "Amazon," commanded by Captain Riou, who fell in the next day's battle.
In the year following, Captain Luttrell, having been appointed to the Ganges, took with him Mr. Riou as second lieutenant. He served in this ship until the following summer, when he retired for a time on half-pay, devoting himself to study and continental travel until March, 1786, when we find him serving under Admiral Elliot as second lieutenant of the Salisbury.
It seemed as if not a man on board could escape, `Come, then, my boys, exclaimed their brave Captain Riou, `let us all die together! They were the last words he ever spoke. The next moment a shot cut him in two. There was not a more gallant officer, or one the men loved better, in the service. "Well, as I was saying, on we went at it for four long hours.
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