umphantly attacked a guard-house, protected by 2 6-pounder field-pieces, 40 troops of the line, 26 artillery, and a strong party of militia, and, after half wading, half swimming across a river, ascended a jungle-hill, and further captured 2 guns (12’s), another battery, and the enemy’s colours. Before re-embarking, a fresh and equally successful skirmish took place with a strong party who had been routed from the first battery, but who had since been reinforced. On their way back to the boats the British likewise burnt a signal-house, flag-staif, &c., a mile from the beach. A national schooner, L’Estafette, of 4 guns and 15 men, also fell into their hands, with a mail on board for Bourbon, consisting of nearly 600 pubhc and private letters, disclosing for the first time the military resources, the condition of the mercantile interests, and the views of the inhabitants of both islands. Capt. Willoughby’s attack upon Jacotel was the first ever made upon any part of the Isle of France, and fully established what had been hitherto doubted, the practicability of making a descent upon a more extended scale.[1] In consequence of this achievement the First Lord of the Admiralty, on 5 of the following Sept., justly confirmed the Néréide’s gallant Captain in the command of that frigate. On 15 June, 1810, while on shore at Ile Platte, a small island near the northern extremity of the Mauritius, and in the act of exercising his men at small arms, a musket in the hands of a marine burst, inflicting upon Capt. Willoughby a dreadful wound, supposed at the time to be mortal. His lower jaw on the right side was badly fractured, and his neck so lacerated that the windpipe lay bare. For three weeks he could not speak. The wound, however, at length healed, but not until a painful exfoliation of the jaw had taken place. In July, 1810, having embarked at Rodriguez a light corps of about 500 strong, and conveyed them in the Néréide to the Rivière des Pluies, in Ile de Bourbon, Capt. Willoughby there, on the 7th, superintended the debarkation of the troops under circumstances of great peril, and on the evening of the same day assisted at the capture of the enemy’s battery and post at Ste. Marie.[2] For his share in these and the other operations which led to the surrender of Ile de Bourbon to the British arms, he was especially thanked, and was mentioned in high terms of approbation both by Commodore Rowley and Lieut.-Colonel Keating. After the capture, at a distance of about four miles from Port Sud-Est, of Ile de la Passe, a service he had himself undertaken to effect, but had been anticipated in, in consequence of the bad sailing of his ship, Capt. Willoughby, on 17 Aug., landed with a party of rather more than 200 seamen, marines, and soldiers, at Canaille de Bois, for the purpose of thence proceeding towards Grand Port, and, by the distribution of proclamations among the inhabitants at the intermediate places, of paving the way “for the most important” (as expressed in the House of Commons 13 Feb. 1811) “of all our colonial conquests since the commencement of the war” – the reduction of the Isle of France. This dangerous service, the penalty for which, if taken prisoner, was death, he most effectually performed, and, although he advanced 20 miles into the enemy’s country, he did not lose a single man. During his march he attacked and carried the enemy’s fort at Pointe du Diable, where he spiked 8 24-pounders and 2 13-inch mortars, besides burning their carriages, blowing up the magazines, and embarking a 13-inch brass mortar in a new praam, well calculated for carrying troops and guns over flats. The order, discipline, and forbearance observed throughout the expedition by the British, who were in sight the whole time of a strong body of the enemy under General Van de Masson, tended greatly to conciliate the natives, and to prepossess them in favour of their future conquerors. On the next day, the 18th, they again landed and destroyed the signal-house, staffs, &c., of Grande Rivière, although watched by a body of 700 or 800 men. While the Néréide, on 20 of the same month, was lying off the Ile de la Passe, which island she had been ordered to protect, Capt. Willoughby observed a strange squadron, which proved to be La Bellone and Minerve French frigates, and 18-gun corvette Le Victor, in charge of two prize Indiamen. Knowing that if these three men-of-war, which had but just arrived from Europe, were suffered to form a junction with three other of the enemy’s frigates and a fine corvette then at Port Louis, they would prove far too strong for the British force off the island, which only consisted, besides the Néréide, of the frigates Sirius, Iphigenia, and Magicienne, he endeavoured by a ruse-de-guerre to draw them into Grand Port. Succeeding in the latter object, Capt. Willoughby, whose position rendered it necessary that the enemy should pass close to him, compelled Le Victor to haul down her colours, and exchanged broadsides with the Minerve. He next, however, on being joined by his consorts, to whom he had sent intelligence of this new event, took part in a series of desperate and unhappy operations, which, by 28 Aug., terminated in the self-destruction of the Magicienne and Sirius, and the capture, by the French ships above named, of the Néréide (who had led the squadron into action) and the Iphigenia. The Néréide was taken on the 24th, after she had been reduced to a mere wreck, and had incurred – during a glorious resistance almost unparalleled even in the brilliant annals of the British navy – a loss, out of 281 persons, of about 230 killed and wounded! Among the latter was the chivalrous Willoughby himself, who, to his former wounds, had now to add, besides a splintered cheek, the loss of one eye, torn completely from its socket, and the most serious injury to the other.[3] The consummate gallantry indeed, the utter disregard of self, and the exalted devotion to his country’s interests, which have emblazoned the acts of this hero’s career, in every rank and under every circumstance, but especially those achieved by him in the successive character of Captain of H.M. ships Otter and Néréide, we confess to have never seen surpassed in any of the myriad soul-stirring deeds which have necessarily passed in review before us. The very enemy, into whose power he was thrust by the fortune of war, struck with wonderment at the splendour of his defence, allowed him to retain a life which his fearless distribution of the proclamations, above alluded to, had now placed at their disposal.[4] On his return to England, Capt. Willoughby was surveyed by the College of Surgeons, and in consequence of their report a pension of 300l per annum (increased in 1815 to 550l.) was granted to him 4 Oct. 1811; it being ascertained that he had not only lost an eye, but that his other wounds were more than equal to the loss of a limb. We next, in 1812, find him volunteering into the service of Russia, where he fought against the French, until taken prisoner by the latter after their defeat of General Steingell – a misfortune which was occasioned by an act of generosity in giving up his own horse, and that of his attendant Cossack, to the use of two Russian soldiers who were attempting with bleeding and mangled limbs to withdraw from the scene of slaughter. He then for a time became involved in all the horrors of the retreat from Moscow and on being ultimately sent to France was there detained until the peace. Capt. Willoughby’s exertions in the cause of Russia were to have been rewarded, it was intimated, with the order of St. Anne of the Second Class – a boon, however, which
- ↑ Vide Gaz. 1810, p. 1325.
- ↑ A schooner, at the landing of the troops, was steered by Capt. Willoughby, who still had the dressings on his wound. – Vide Gaz. 1810, p. 1681.
- ↑ Vide Gaz. 1810, p. 1977, and Gaz, 1811, p. 261.
- ↑ The Court-martial, which subsequently assembled to try Capt. Willoughby for the loss of his ship, not onlv adjudged him to be most honourably acquitted, but was of opinion that the Néréide had been carried into action in a most judicious, officer-like, and gallant manner; it also expressed its high admiration of the noble conduct of the Captain, Officers, and ship’s company, during the whole of the unequal contest; and was further of opinion that the Néréide was not surrendered to the enemy until she was disabled in every respect, so as to render all further resistance useless.
