tain Chads, R.N. will accept his best thanks for their perseverance in the fatiguing and harassing service in which they have been engaged, and it is with great pleasure he has received a report of the unanimity and good feeling with which the best exertions of the officers and men of both services were brought forward upon this, as on all other occasions where they have been employed together, and which it has so often been his pride to report to the highest authorities.
Major Snodgrass contents himself with saying, that “the stockades upon the Dalla river, and those upon the Panlang branch, or principal passage into the Irrawaddy, were attacked and carried with few casualties on our part, while the enemy in both instances suffered severely, with the additional loss of many pieces of artillery.” In an official letter to Captain Coe, dated Sept. 28th, Captain Chads expresses himself as follows:–
“A chart drawn by Mr. Winsor, Admiralty midshipman of the Sophie, to whom I feel much indebted for his exertion and ability, he having had the arduous charge of the steam-vessel during the whole of the time, will enable you to judge of our progress; the Satellite was on shore three times, and the Diana once, but without the slightest injury. It now becomes a most pleasing duty for me to express the high satisfaction I feel at the conduct of the officers and seamen I had the pleasure to command; their privations and harassing duties were extreme, under heavy rains, guards by night from fire-rafts, with the enemy’s war-boats constantly watching close to them, and incessant towing of the flotilla by day; their high spirits were unabated; and without the utmost zeal and fatigue in the officers commanding the divisions, it would have been impossible to have advanced, manned as they[1] are, with natives only. Lieutenant Dobson rendered me every assistance, and was of great service; he was severely burnt on the 22d. From the exemplary conduct of these officers and seamen, allow me, Sir, to recommend them to your favorable attention. The casualties, I rejoice to say, have been very few – four seamen of the Arachne wounded.”
“The rains continued during the whole month of September, and sickness had arrived at an alarming height. An epidemic fever, which prevailed all over India, made its appearance among the troops, which, although in few instances of a fatal tendency, left all those whom it attacked in a de-
- ↑ The gun-vessels and row-boats.
