under his directions. The manner in which this service was performed will be inferred from the following official letter:
“Sir,– The fleet under my command being safely moored in the Roompot, I have great pleasure in doing justice to the zeal, intelligence, and activity with which you have discharged the various and frequently arduous services in which you have been employed while under my command; and in assuring you of the satisfaction your conduct gave me yesterday, in leading the fleet in to a safe anchorage in the Roompot, which I shall not fail to represent to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. I am, &c.
“To Captain Hancock.”
After the performance of the important service mentioned in the latter part of Admiral Young’s letter, Captain Hancock proceeded into the West Scheldt, passing the batteries of Flushing and Cadsand without sustaining any loss. On the 2d Mar; 1814, he displayed his usual zeal and ability in placing the Nymphen in an admirable though dangerous situation for heaving the Antelope of 50 guns off a shoal, on which she had struck whilst endeavouring to push into the same branch of the river, which service was thus acknowledged by Captain Samuel Butcher, her commander:
“To the steady intrepidity of Captain Hancock, who, amidst a shower of shot and shells falling in every direction, took up, and retained for more than five hours, a position from which I was enabled to get on board a bower cable, I am highly indebted.”
The occupation of South Beveland, Schowen, &c. by different detachments from the British fleet, has already been noticed in the course of this work; and it therefore only remains for us to say that Captain Hancock continued to be most actively employed in the Scheldt during the whole of those operations; which, owing to the brilliant successes of Wellington, and the rapid advance of the allied armies towards Paris, merged into an insignificance that would not have attended them under any other circumstances. The revolution in Holland is now, however, justly considered as one of the most important features of the late war; and, surely, the expulsion of the common enemy from the islands of Zealand, by a British fleet, at an inclement season of the year, should not be deemed a service unworthy of the future historian’s notice.
