brilliant exploits had been open to him, he would have secured the transference of his name from the commanders’ to the post-captains’ list earlier than he did; but the Baltic station, although it entailed hard duty, afforded no chance of preferment; a proof of which is supplied by the fact, that not a single promotion of the above nature took place /or service while he remained there.
During those intervals when the Woodlark was not cruising, Captain Watts was often employed in that most irksome of services, – escorting convoys through the circuitous navigation of the Great Belt. Even here his activity did not forsake him. The passage is not, upon an average, more than 5 or 6 miles across, and it consequently afforded vast facilities to the Danish privateers for annoying the different convoys. On one occasion, anticipating an attack, he resolved, as an experiment, to keep the Woodlark under sail all night, and was repaid for his vigilance by capturing a lugger, which he discovered at midnight in the rear of the convoy, carrying one of them oft. The success attending this first attempt to keep an armed vessel under sail all night, for the better protection of the trade, was productive of great additional labour to him, as he generally afterwards had this duty imposed on him, by the senior officer; the exertion and fatigue attendant on which, few knew of or cared about. Some notion of what it occasionally amounted to may be entertained when we state, that for many weeks in succession he never had his clothes off, being on deck all night, and continually on the alert. While thus arduously and laboriously employed, he succeeded in capturing five or six vessels, calculated to do much mischief to the Baltic trade.
In 1812, the Woodlark was ordered by Captain Raper, of the Mars 74, to lead in to the attack of a flotilla, stationed to guard the entrance of the Malmo Channel. The Mars, in following, struck on a shoal, in a position favorable for an attack by the Danish gun-boats. In order to attract their attention from her, Captain Watts, although under every disadvantage, brought them to action, and did not leave off until the British ship was again afloat, with the signal of recall
