Grant, relative to our future operations, I determined upon remaining in harbour one day longer. On the following morning (May 5th), we finally put to sea, detaching a part of my force, under Brigadier M‘Creagh[1], against the island of Cheduba, and sending another detachment, under Major Wahab, of the Madras establishment, against Negrais, proceeding myself with the main body for the Rangoon river, which we reached on the 10th, and anchored within the bar.”
The naval force attached to this expedition consisted of the Liffey 50, Commodore Grant; Slaney 20, Captain Charles Mitchell; Larne 20, Captain Frederick Marryat; and Sophie 18, Captain George Frederick Ryves; four of the Honorable Company’s cruisers, under the command of Captain Henry Hardy; a Penang government vessel; eighteen brigs, schooners, and other small craft (formerly pleasure yachts on the Ganges), each armed with two light carronades and four swivels, and manned with twelve Lascars, under the command of a European; twenty row-boats, lugger-rigged (formerly Calcutta pilot-boats), each carrying an 18-pounder in the bow, and manned with from 16 to 20 Lascars; the Diana, steam-vessel; and about forty sail of transports, only one or two of which had. English crews. The Hon. Company’s cruisers were manned with British sailors, Hindoos, and Mahometans; and all the row-boats were under the command of Mr. William Lindquist, of the Bengal pilot service. The total number of fighting men embarked at Calcutta and Madras, in April, 1824, was 8701, of whom 4077 were British troops.
On the morning of the 11th May, the fleet, led by the Liffey and Larne, sailed up the Rangoon river, without any pilots on board, and in the course of a few hours arrived off the town, meeting with no greater opposition than some insignificant discharges of artillery from one or two of the guardhouses on either bank.
“Henzawaddy, or the province of Rangoon, is a delta
- ↑ In the Hon. Company’s timber ship Ernâud, Captain David Jones, escorted by the Slaney sloop of war.
