On the 21st Aug. 1810, Lieutenant Watling and Mr. John Andrews, midshipman, in two small boats, containing between them only nine men, with no other weapons of offence than the stretchers, followed a large ship into Riviere-Noire, and there attacked and carried her, under the fire of several formidable batteries. She proved to be the Windham East Indiaman, of 30 guns, recently captured by a French squadron, and then in charge of a lieutenant de vaisseau, whose prize-crew consisted of not less than thirty men, several of whom were wounded by the fire from the shore, after they had ceased to resist their assailants. Of this vary gallant exploit, we can find no official account, beyond a passage in a letter to the Admiralty, from Commissioner Shield at the Cape of Good Hope, stating that the Windham had been recaptured by the Sirius.
During the subsequent disastrous attack made by the Sirius and three other frigates, upon a French squadron in Port Sud-Est, Lieutenant Watling was the bearer of most of the orders issued by the senior officer to his brother-captains; and at the termination of that unfortunate business, he nearly lost his life in taking measures for ensuring the speedy destruction of the Sirius[1], having gone below and opened the magazine doors after every other person had abandoned her, and only regained the deck at the moment when the flames, recently kindled by Captain Pym and himself, were bursting forth in all directions, and the last boat was actually pulling away, the people in her supposing that he had fallen a sacrifice to his devotedness and zeal.
After the blowing up of the Sirius, Lieutenant Watling volunteered to convey Captain Pym’s despatches to Isle Bourbon, a distance of 140 miles; and at 8 p.m. Aug. 25th, he was accordingly sent thither in the pinnace with nine men. A French brig, l’Entreprenante, then cruising off Port Sud-Est, gave chace to him ; but, by pulling in-shore among the breakers, he adroitly escaped from her, and landed at St. Denis on the 27th, about 2 a.m. Immediately on his
