pared to repel the attempt, the enemy put her helm hard a-starboard and sheered off, A furious cannonade was now maintained on both sides, the yard-arms nearly locking, until the Psyché, ranging a-head, crossed her opponent’s bows. In practising this manoeuvre, the Psyché brought herself in the wind; but by throwing her headsails aback, and keeping her after-yards square or shivering, the French ship paid off; not, however, until the Wilhelmina, with her starboard guns, had poured in a raking fire astern. After this, the two ships again got parallel to each other, and again engaged so closely that their yards were overhanging; when, at 7 a.m., profiting by her more perfect state aloft, and her very superior sailing, the Psyché ceased firing, crowded all the canvass she could spread, and stood away.
“Ill calculated, indeed, was the Wilhelmina for a chase. Her maintop-mast was down, her bowsprit wounded in two places, and her foremast in ten; her fore and main-yards, and her main and mizen-masts, were also wounded, and her lower rigging and all her boats more or less damaged. A Captain Wright, of the India service, was on board the Psyché during the engagement, and subsequently mentioned, that the Wilhelmina’s shot, comparatively small as they were, had reduced the privateer to nearly a sinking state; the latter, at the close of the action, having seven feet water in her hold, a circumstance that sufficiently explains the manner of its termination.”
Of 134 men and boys, including ten belonging to another ship, “the Wilhelmina had four mortally and six slightly wounded. La Psyché, according to the statement of the above officer, had her second captain and ten men slain, and her commander and thirty-two men wounded, thirteen of them mortally, and Mons. Trogoff dangerously.”
“With such a disparity of force as evidently existed against the Wilhelmina, this was an action highly honorable to the British ship. It is true that her opponent was a privateer; but the Psyché, by all accounts, was a better appointed, better manned, and better disciplined ship, than many frigates of the same force in the French navy.” Captain Lambert’s commission as commander had been confirmed by the Admiralty on the 5th April, 1803; and his gallantry on this occasion was rewarded, as it well merited, by promotion to post rank, on the 10th of April, 1805.
After quitting the Wilhelmina, la Psyché proceeded with all haste, pumping day and night, to the Isle of France, where she was purchased for the national navy, and placed under the command of Mons. Bergeret, already known to us
