le Neptune, French privateer, mounting 16 guns, with a complement of 65 men; the following is an extract of his official letter:–
“At 8-30 A.M., Owers light hearing N.N.E., observed a lugger to windward, under easy sail; altered our course to near the shore, and took in the studding-sails; the lugger immediately bore up and followed; at 10-30, she came up on the larboard quarter, and hailed us to bring to and strike; her decks were full of men, in readiness for boarding. She put her helm up to lay us alongside, we put ours down, and fired four guns and a volley of musketry; she fell on board, and was carried in the most gallant style by boarding. The enemy had 4 men killed and 10 wounded; 5 very severely, 1 since dead: I am happy to say, that we had only 2 men wounded.”
Captain Pell’s post commission bears date Nov. 1, 1813. His last appointment was, Oct. 4, 1814, to the Menai 24, in which ship, after serving for some time on the Irish station, he joined Rear-Admiral Griffith, at Bermuda, from whence he was sent, with a small force under his orders, to cruise in the bay of Fundy. We lastly find him employed off the Chesapeake, and in visiting several American ports, subsequent to the termination of hostilities. The Menai was paid off at Chatham, in Feb. 1817.
Captain Pell did not retire to private life without undergoing the ordeal of a court-martial, a circumstance which, in justice to his character, we must here record.
A midshipman of the Menai, named Butcher, who had always been treated with extreme kindness and consideration, requited his commander’s friendly regard with a degree of perfidy and ingratitude of which, to the honor of human nature, instances are very rare. Without any assignable, or even conceivable reason, he brought charges against him, of a description equally malicious and ridiculous; and which, indeed, bore upon the very face of them their own refutation. To repeat the whole would be both tedious and useless:– one was, that he had made an improper conversion of ship’s stores; another, that he had cut the standing stays, and lashed them with eyes abaft the masts; a third, that he had ordered a red ensign to be entered as blown away, although not hoisted on the day that it was expended; and a fourth, that he had threatened to flog a midshipman. It is sufficient to state, that the
