obstinate defence, maintaining a close action of two hours, in which, and in a running fight of equal duration, she had 20 of her crew killed, and 24 wounded. The Pearl’s loss was only 6 slain and 10 wounded.
On the 16th March, 1781, Captain Montagu was in company with the squadron under Vice-Admiral Arbuthnot, when that officer encountered M. de Ternay, then on his way to co-operate with a detachment of the American army in an attack upon Brigadier-General Arnold, whose corps had nearly over-run the whole province of Virginia. Unfortunately, a thick haze, together with the disabled condition of the three ships on which the brunt of the engagement chiefly fell, rendered it impossible for the British squadron to pursue the advantage it had gained, and the contest was consequently indecisive.
Captain Montagu’s abilities and zeal were by this time so highly and generally appreciated, that when, in October following, Rear-Admiral Graves, who had succeeded to the chief command of the naval force employed on the American station, meditated an attack upon the French armament under Count de Grasse, then lying at the entrance of the York river, between the sands called the Horse Shoe and the York Spit, he appointed the Pearl to lead his fleet; unfortunately, however, Earl Cornwallis, to whose rescue he had come from New York, (accompanied by the army under Sir Henry Clinton,) had been obliged to capitulate before his arrival, and the enterprise was consequently abandoned[1].
During the Spanish armament, in 1790[2], Captain Montagu obtained the command of the Hector, 74; and at the commencement of the war with France, in 1793, he accompanied Rear-Admiral Gardner to Barbadoes, where he arrived on the 27th April.
In the ensuing summer, the Rear-Admiral, in conjunction
- ↑ Captain Montagu returned to England in a shattered state of health, and paid off the Pearl, which ship brought Sir Henry Clinton and General Kinphaussen from America, in 1782.
- ↑ See p. 59.
