1810	Light Squadrons and Single Ships	250

wounded. These round numbers, as our contemporary is also of opinion, are probably incorrect and exaggerated ; * but," Captain Edward Brenton adds, " the slaughter, particularly on board the frigate, from her crowded decks, the close position, and the smoothness of the water, must have been very severe. "

In addition to the encomiums which he passes upon his first lieutenant, and upon Captain Hoste of the engineers (brother to the captain of the Amphion), Captain Jahleel Brenton strongly recommends his two remaining lieutenants, William Augustus Baumgardt and Henry Bourne ; also his master, Henry George Slenner, his two lieutenants of marines, Charles Fegan and Christopher Fottrell, and his purser, James Dunn, who took charge of a division of guns on the main deck, in the place of the officer already mentioned as absent in a prize. For the distinguished part which he took in the action, Lieutenant Willes, on the 2d of June, was deservedly promoted to the rank of commander.

Soon after the action had ended in the manner we have stated, the sea-breeze or south-west wind set in. The Spartan then, having repaired her principal damages, took her prize in tow, and stood in triumph directly across, and within about four miles of, the mole of Naples, to the great chagrin and mortification, as was afterwards understood, of Prince Murat ; who had been the whole morning anxiously watching on the mole, to see his squadron tow in the British frigate. At this time the beaten French frigate and corvette had just dropped their anchor, before the town. It would not do for the world, particularly for France, to know how the matter really stood. Hence the Moniteur is commanded to say: " Il est impossible de se battre avec plus de bravoure que ne l'a fait la flotille dans cette brillante affaire, &c." And then the Spartan herself is declared to have been " un vaisseau rasé, portant 50 bouches à fen, done 30 canons de 24 et 20 caronades de 32."

On the 22d of May the British 38-gun frigate Alceste, Captain Murray Maxwell, chased several French vessels into the bay of Agaye, or Agay, near the gulf of Fréjus. Finding that the two batteries, one on each side of the entrance, which protected the vessels, possessed by their height a great advantage over the ship, Captain Maxwell, in the evening, detached two strong parties to endeavour to carry them by storm. The party, under Lieutenant Andrew Wilson, first of the Alceste, that landed on the right of the bay, having to march through a very thick wood to get in the rear of the fort, was attacked in the midst of it by one of the enemy's pickets, whom the marines, under the command of Lieutenants Walter Griffith Lloyd and Richard Hawkey of that corps, without sustaining any loss, very soon dislodged: but the guide, taking advantage of the firing,

* Brenton, vol. iv., p. 436.

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