Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v3p1.djvu/218

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POST CAPTAINS OF 1825.
203

We next find the Greyhound employed on the coast of Luconia, where she was wrecked, Oct. 11th, 1808. Returning to Prince of Wales’s Island, on parole, in the Hon. Company’s cruiser Discovery, after suffering three months’ captivity at Manilla, Captain Pakenham, with part of his officers and crew, were again detained, by two French frigates[1], near the Straits of Sincapore, and taken to Batavia. From thence, the captain was soon permitted to depart ; but the officers and men, then under Lieutenant Grace, were kept for some time at Weltervreeden, a military post near that city; and afterwards suddenly marched to the fortress of Meester Cornelius, situated in a damp and unwholesome spot, where they were all closely confined for a period of nearly eight months; to answer for the acts of a person over whom they could have no controul. Their prison, we are informed, was a long barrack-room, covered with red tiles, having no cieling, nor any division whatever; – during the day it was intensely hot, and the tiles retained their heat long after the sun had set; the windows were strongly barred, with shutters outside, opened and closed at the pleasure of the guard, who frequently secured them for the night long before the sun went down. Water for the use of the prisoners was brought in by Malays; but they were obliged to cook their own provisions, and that at the same end of the room where another tub was placed in a corner, before which it was necessary to keep a blanket suspended for the sake of decency. A river running close to the walls of the prison, made their desire for bathing, whether early or late, the greater; but even this indulgence was withheld after the first month, nor would it ever have been granted with the knowledge of Marshal Daendels, then governor-general of Java. During their mutual confinement at Manilla and Batavia, Mr. Grace was the inseparable companion of Captain Pakenham, who ever afterwards spoke of him in the strongest terms of warm friendship and sincere regard.

On the 22d of Sept. 1809, the surviving officers and men of the Greyhound were at length released from their horrible pri-