for his return having long elapsed, it was apprehended some accident had befallen him, to ascertain which, Lieutenant West was despatched (Nov. 26th, 1813) with a second flag to Lewes, a town within the entrance of the above river. The treatment he met with on landing, was of so ungenerous and unmanly a nature as to reflect disgrace upon the American name. He was surrounded, bullied, and insulted; while all his boat’s crew, excepting one man, were enticed from their allegiance, and induced to desert. With the assistance of that man only, he pushed off when nearly dark, and notwithstanding a tempestuous night and heavy sea, succeeded in reaching his ship, at a distance of six or seven leagues, bringing with him an illiterate and impudent letter from the Yankee commandant, commenting upon the informality of the flag of truce, and interdicting any further intercourse of a similar nature. A debilitating fever was the consequence of this great exertion of body and mind, from the effects of which it was many years before Lieutenant West recovered.
We next find the Jaseur employed in the Chesapeake, v.here her first lieutenant, in a boat containing only six men besides himself, captured and brought out from under a battery, the American privateer Grecian, mounting four carriage guns and five swivels, with a complement of twenty-seven men. For this service, by which a fine schooner, pierced for twenty guns, was added to the British navy, Mr. West received a letter of thanks from Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander I. Cochrane. He afterwards assisted at the capture of the towns of Benedict and Marlborough, on the banks of the Patuxent[1]; and during his stay in the waters of the Chesapeake, above thirty vessels of different descriptions were taken and destroyed by boats under his command.
In Oct. 1814, Lieutenant West, then acting commander of the Jaseur, was charged with despatches and ordered by Rear-Admiral Griffith to convoy some transports from Hali-
