1810	Thistle and Havik	225

letters, announcing, the capture of half a dozen insignificant chasse-marées, or of some privateer of trifling force, and that perhaps by a frigate ? Nay, the space occupied by the letters of Sir Charles Cotton and Captain Blackwood, already adverted to, * would have contained at least two of the rejected letters, and have probably led to the promotion of two deserving officers.

To the naval annalist, these brief statements occasion great inconvenience ; to him especially who feels bound to give a better excuse for the omission of the details of a well-conducted enterprise, than that the board of admiralty had not deemed them of sufficient importance to appear in the London Gazette. Unfortunately, too, the sources of information, which for their authenticity and minuteness we prefer to all others, fail us in the majority of those daring, and far from uninteresting cases, attack by boats upon the enemy's armed vessels and shore batteries. The log seldom if ever states more, than that at such an hour the boats quitted the ship, and at such an hour returned : sometimes the loss in killed and wounded is inserted, and more rarely the name of the officer who commanded the party.

On the 10th of February, at 10 h. 30 m. a.m., latitude 25� 22' north, longitude 61� 27' west, the British 10-gun schooner Thistle (18-pounder carronades, with 50 men and boys), Lieutenant Peter Procter, steering north-east by north with the wind at south-east, discovered and chased a strange ship in the east-south-east. At 4 p.m. having by superiority of sailing neared the stranger considerably, the Thistle fired a gun and hoisted her colours. The example was immediately followed by the ship, which was the Dutch corvette Havik, Lieutenant de vaisseau Jean Stéeling ; a large India-built ship, pierced for 18 guns and mounting 10 (six long 4-pounders and four 2-pound swivels), with a complement of 52 men and boys, including the Batavian rear-admiral, Armand-Adrien Buyskes, late lieutenant-governor and commander-in-chief at Batavia, and his suite, bound from that port to New York, and partly laden with spices and indigo.

At 5 p.m., which made just seven hours and a half from the commencement of the chase, the Thistle got alongside the Havik, and firing across her bows, hailed her to bring to. The reply to this was a broadside. The action immediately commenced, and was maintained with mutual spirit. At 6 h. 15 m. p.m. the Havik attempted to run the schooner down ; but the latter, hauling aft her sheets, adroitly avoided the bows of her huge opponent. The Thistle, three of whose carronades had been dismounted since the early part of the action, continued closely - engaging the Havik until 6 h. 45 m. P, M. ; when the latter made all sail and endeavoured to escape before the wind. This being

* See p. 219.

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