promptly availed himself by hauling up several points, unperceived by the enemy, who ran so far to leeward before the weather cleared up that she was then scarcely visible[1].
Having thus skilfully escaped from further annoyance. Captain de Starck pursued his voyage with all possible expedition, and landed Mr. Erskine at Annapolis Royal, on the 30th October. Returning from thence, he fell in with an English 74, the Captain of which ship sent him to Bermuda, with instructions to place himself under the orders of Vice-Admiral Berkeley, commander-in-chief on the Halifax station, by whose directions he was shortly after ordered to carry home the intercepted despatches of Mons. Villaumez, which had been taken out of an American vessel examined by the Avon, on her passage from the Chesapeake.
Captain de Starck arrived at Spithead on the 14th Jan. I8O7; and was soon afterwards superseded, in consequence of his having been promoted to post rank on the 25th Sept. preceding. A change of ministry taking place about the same period, he was doomed to the mortification of continuing on shore during the remainder of the war, notwithstanding an appointment to a frigate had actually been promised him as a reward for his adroit conduct in escaping from the Regulus, whereby his Majesty’s representative was secured from any indignity with which an implacable enemy might have felt disposed to treat him.
The highly respectable gentleman whose services we have been describing, was the original inventor of the now well-known method of projecting a rope by means of powder and shot, the practicability of which contrivance he proved by repeated experiments made on the river Thames, in 1789. A description of Captain de Starck’s apparatus, and a plate shewing the manner in which he used it, will be found in the valuable work published by Rear-Admiral Ekins, on the subject of “Naval Battles[2].”
- ↑ The Regulus was one of the French squadron mentioned at p. 68 et seq. of this volume; and when met by Captain de Starck she was returning home from the coast of America.
- ↑ See also our memoir of Captain Henry Hope, C.B.
