POST-CAPTAINS OF 1808.
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inlet on the coast of Candia in that neighbourhood, which determined me to run close along shore in the day time and examine it; accordingly, the following morning (rounding Cape Metalla) two misticoes were observed under sail standing towards us; we hauled up in chase, when one of them ran behind a point, which proved to be an island; the other, finding she could not gain the anchorage without risk of capture, bore up and run to leeward.
As we approached I made out at least two hundred armed persons on the island where I supposed was a populous village, but ascertained from the mate of a Greek schooner which came out, that the armed persons we saw were the crews of four misticoes, who were committing depredations upon the Turkish villages on the coast of Candia, and were not provided with commissions from the Greek government: he described their position as too strong to be attacked with boats unsupported by the ship, and their determination to defend the vessels to the last extremity; considering therefore how important it was to destroy such an organized band of pirates, who professedly subsisted by plunder, I sent the master, with the first lieutenant, in the barge, to sound and ascertain if it was possible for me to place the ship so as to attack them; and by his report I found there was sufficient depth of water, though not room to swing in the event of a change of wind, or to get out again without warping; but as the weather was particularly fine, and the breeze along shore, I conceived something might be done by risking a little; and feeling anxious to put a stop to their piratical depredations upon our merchant vessels, and that I could not with propriety leave them in quiet possession of such a port, where it would be impossible to watch or blockade them, I decided upon taking the ship in, and she was rounded to inside the eastern point of the island, and to windward of the round rock which lies a cable’s length from it, the anchor let go in 16 fathoms, with a spring on the cable. It was hardly down when we observed that one of the misticoes intended to escape by the weather channel; and Lieutenant Gordon in the barge gallantly dashed forward to board her, followed by Lieutenant (Elisha William) Tupper in the launch, and Mr. John Pyne (Admiralty Mate) in the yawl, supported by the two cutters and jolly boat, commanded by Messrs. Forbes, Knox[1], and Hamilton, (Midshipmen,) Lieutenant Brown, R.M., was in one of the former, on his way from the Greek schooner which he had had charge of, to join Lieutenant Gordon in the barge: the mistico could not contend against such determined gallantry, and Lieutenant Gordon succeeded in boarding, and carried her, in the execution of which he received three very severe wounds; but so destructive was the fire from behind the stone walls which the pirates had thrown up for their protection, that only one man in the barge escaped, so that it was quite impossible to keep possession of her. Lieu-- ↑ Mr. James Maxwell Knox was killed.
