Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v2p1.djvu/222

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210
POST-CAPTAINS OF 1798.

naval and military hospitals, for a passage to England. In forty-eight hours after his departure from Carlisle Bay, the yellow fever raged in the most malignant manner; and not an hour passed without one or two gallant fellows being committed to a watery grave. The surgeon and his assistant fell victims to this dreadful disease, the second day after it appeared; and Captain Manby himself took charge of the sick, following the directions of Dr. Armstrong, who kindly came off from St. Kitt’s, and recommended ten grains of calomel to be administered every two hours to each patient, and the cold effusion directly after. This had the effect of checking the career of death in a slight degree; but Captain Manby’s anxiety for the safety of his valuable charge, added to feelings of the most acute nature, brought on an attack of the fever, which had nearly numbered him with the dead, and made an impression on a good constitution that we fear will never be totally eradicated. At Tortola, a medical assistant was procured; and the Africaine, after losing nearly one-third of her officers and crew, arrived in six weeks at Falmouth. On the malignity of the disease being made known, she was ordered to perform forty days quarantine at the Scilly islands, whither a physician was sent from London to attend her. Being at length released, she proceeded to Sheerness, and was there put out of commission.

Captain Manby’s next appointment was to the Uranie of 36 guns; but that ship, being soon after found very defective, was paid off and taken to pieces. The next frigate that became vacant was the Thalia, to which he was appointed by Lord Mulgrave; who likewise gave him the command of a small squadron stationed off Jersey; where he passed a year without any thing particular occurring, except the capture of le Requin, a French privateer, of 14 guns. In 1808, he was sent with the Medusa frigate and Locust brig, under his orders, to look out for two French frigates, supposed to have gone to Davis’s Straits for the purpose of destroying our Greenland fishery. On this frigid service he continued twelve weeks, without seeing an enemy. In the course of that period, each vessel received much damage from the ice, as several days frequently elapsed without the possibility of seeing fifty yards in any direction, owing to the prevailing thick fogs;