the service, and his attention to every other part of his duty, did adjudge him only to be reprimanded, and admonished to be more careful in future. Mr. Sam. Birt, master of the Clio, was afterwards tried for a neglect of the 22d article of his instructions, which also refers to keeping the lead going in pilot-water; when he was, in consideration of the good character given him by his commander, only reprimanded, and admonished to be more careful in future.
In Nov. 1829, Commander Deans was appointed to the Childers sloop, on the North Sea station; and in Jan. 1831, he and his first lieutenant appeared before a court-martial on charges, the nature of which will be seen by his
Defence.
“Mr. President and Gentlemen of this Honourable Court: – I stand before you as the commander of one of his Majesty’s ships of war, on my trial, on charges brought forward by the friends of a midshipman, late belonging to the Childers, under my command, for tricing him up in the main-top, and for subsequently putting him in irons; which charges, I allow, of themselves imply cruelty and oppression; but I trust I shall not fail to make it appear, that a disposition to be cruel, overbearing, or oppressive towards those placed under my command, is wholly foreign to my feelings, and cannot with justice or truth be maintained against me – proved not only by those officers and men lately under my command in the Clio, but most fully so by the officers and men of the Childers.
“I trust that this Hon. Court will be of opinion that such a step as that I was compelled to adopt towards Mr. Collymore, midshipman, was absolutely required, in justice to the maintenance of the necessary discipline of the service, caused not only by his mutinous manner and gestures at the time of his misconduct, but also for his repeated acts of insubordination and contempt of orders previously; one of which, with the permission of this Hon. Court, I beg leave to state: – When H.M. ship Childers was at anchor off Harwich, in the month of April of last year, on or about the 12th day of that month, I directed a boat to be sent at night, under the command of Mr. Donaldson, the gunner, with Mr. Collymore, and six men, along the coast to look out for smugglers; and it blowing very hard, the boat was obliged to land. At daylight the party returned on board. On the evening of the following day, a person respectably dressed as a farmer came on board the Childers, and complained to me that his house had, the previous night, been attacked by three men and an officer, and that his windows had been broken, and his premises had sustained other injury, and that the party had put himself and his family in bodily fear. He suspected the men