death of Lord Aubrey Beauclerk [q.v.]; and when the idea of success against Cartagena was given up, Boscawen was again told oft* to assist Captain Knowles in the laborious, if not brilliant, duty of demolishing such of the forts as had fallen into English hands. In May 1742 the Prince Frederick returned to England, and in the following month Boscawen was appointed to the Dreadnought of 60 guns. In this ship he was employed on the home station during 1743, and was with the main fleet when Sir John Norris permitted the French to escape off Dungeness, 24 Feb. 1743-4. A few weeks later, 28 April, whilst on an independent cruise in the Channel, he had the fortune to pick up the French frigate Medee, the first capture made in the war. This prize, though a fine ship, was found, on survey, of too weak scantling for the English navy; she was therefore put up for sale and bought by a company of merchants, in whose private service, bearing the name of Boscawen, she cruised with good success for the next eighteen months, at the end of which time she almost fell to pieces by the weight of her own guns and masts (Voyages and Cruises of Commodore Walker, 1762).
Towards the end of 1744, Boscawen was appointed to the Royal Sovereign guardship at the Nore, and commanded her, with the superintendence of all the hired vessels from the river, during the critical year 1745. In January 1745-6 he was appointed to his old ship, the Namur, now cut down from a 90-gun ship to a 74, and during 1740 was employed in the Channel under Vice-admiral Martin, and in command of a small squadron cruising on the Soundings. In the spring of 1747 the Namur formed part of the fleet under Anson, and had an important share in the overwhelming victory over the French squadron off Cape Finisterre on 3 May, when Boscawen was severely wounded in the shoulder by a musket-ball. In recognition of his services, the promotion of flag-officers on 15 July was extended so as to include him, and he was shortly afterwards appointed, by a very unusual commission, commander-in- chief by sea and land of his majesty's forces in the East Indies. With a squadron of six ships of the line, four smaller vessels, and a number of transports and Indiamen, he sailed from St. Helens on 4 Nov. 1747 ; waited at the Cape six weeks, 29 March to 8 May 1748, to allow some missing ships to come in, and to refresh the troops; and having failed in an attempt to carry Mauritius by surprise, 23-25 June, finally arrived at Fort St. David on 29 July. Boscawen's instructions pointed out the reduction of Pondicherry as the first object of the expedition : and the land force- at his disposal, which, with soldiers, marines, small-arm men from the fleet, and eleven hundred sepoys, amounted to upwards of five thousand men, seemed to warrant a belief in speedy success. But, on the other hand, no secrecy had been preserved in England, and the twelve months which had elapsed since Boscawen's appointment was noised abroad had given ample time for information to be- sent out from France, and for the adoption of every defensive measure which the skill and ingenuity of Dupleix could suggest. The garrison was thus nearly as strong in point of numbers as the assailants: and though a larger proportion were sepoys, there were at least eighteen hundred Europeans. A still more fatal error had been committed in giving Boscawen special instructions to be guided in the siege operations by the opinion of the engineers, a body of men whose pedantic ignorance of their profession, and whose utter want of practical training, had, but a few years before, brought ruin to the expedition against Cartagena. Boscawen, who had gone through that deadly experience, now again found himself hampered by the same clog and under the same circumstances of a sickly and stormy season drawing on, and rendering the utmost despatch the first condition of success. He was thus compelled to waste eighteen most valuable days in the reduction of an utterly insignificant outlying fort; to pitch his camp in a remote and inconvenient situation; to land all the stores at such a distance that the transport proved a very serious difficulty; and to attack on a side where, by reason of inundations, the ap- proaches could not be pushed within eight hundred yards; and all because the engineers knowing nothing beyond the teaching of the schools, and that very imperfectly, neither could nor would understand that the exceptional circumstances required, and the covering force of the ships' guns warranted,, some departure from the narrow rules of abstract theory. The result was much the same as at Cartagena. The sickly season- set in whilst prospect of success was as distant as ever; and after a thousand of the Europeans had died, the siege had to be raised, and the ships sent for the monsoon months to Acheen or Trincomalee, the admiral himself remaining with the army at Fort St. David. In November he received advice of the cessation of arms, with orders to remain till further instructed of the con- clusion of the peace. He was still at St. David in the following April, when on the 12th a violent hurricane struck the coast. Most of the ships were happily at Trinco-
