Three weeks after this dashing affair, Captain Maitland captured le Vaillant, of Bourdeaux, a frigate-privateer, mounting 24 eighteen-pounders, and 6 sixes, with a complement of 240 men. On the 27th of the same month, the Common Council of the city of London voted him their thanks for his distinguished conduct in Muros Bay. About the same period he also received an elegant sword from the Committee of the Patriotic Fund at Lloyd’s; and on the 18th Oct. following, the Mayor and Corporation of Cork unanimously resolved to present him with the freedom of that city, in a silver box, as a reward for his zeal and gallantry displayed on many occasions in the public service, and for his unremitting and successful exertions for the protection of the Irish trade.
On the 13th Dec. 1805, the Loire, accompanied by the Alcmene frigate, fell in with the Rochefort squadron, consisting of six sail of the line, three frigates, and three corvettes. Captain Maitland immediately sent the Alcmene to the fleet off Brest, himself keeping company with the Frenchmen. Being to leeward, and desirous of obtaining the weather gage, as the safest situation for his own ship, he carried a heavy press of sail, and in the night of the l4th, having stretched on as he thought sufficiently for that purpose, put the Loire on the same tack as they were. About 2 A.M. it being then exceedingly dark, he found himself so near one of the largest ships as to hear the officer of the watch giving his orders. As the noise of putting about would have discovered the Loire’s situation, Captain Maitland very prudently abstained from doing so, until by slacking the lee braces and luffing his ship in the wind, the enemy had drawn sufficiently ahead. At day-light he had the satisfaction to observe them 4 or 5 miles to leeward; and although he was chased both on that and the following day by a detachment from the enemy’s squadron, he returned each evening and took his station on the French Admiral’s weather beam, sufficiently near to keep sight of them till the morning. During the night between the 16th and 17th, several large ships were seen to windward running down, and which, on perceiving the Loire and those to lee-
Confiance was 116 feet long on the main-deck, 30 feet wide, measured about 450 tons, and was to have sailed for India in a few days, with a complement of 300 men.
