an hour before Lieutenant Travers, who was the projector and leader of the enterprise, arrived near the lazaretto. This failure, however, did not prevent him from trying a land cruise, during which he overhauled several vehicles, and took from an officer, in a carriage and four, despatches of some importance.
The Imperieuse was subsequently hove down and newly coppered at Mahon, when Captain Duncan obtained permission to shift her foremast further aft, for the purpose of improving her sailing. Anxious to get to sea, he went himself to the arsenal to hurry off spars for sheers; but before they got alongside the mast was already placed in its new position. Lieutenant Travers had taken upon himself the responsibility of shifting it, by making a Spanish windlass of the hand-mast which was placed across the forecastle, supported by the bulwarks and four crossed handspikes, with purchases affixed to the deck and the heel of the fore-mast, and acted upon with levers: the head of the mast being steadied with guys, and a man placed at the laniard of each shroud and stay, to ease away as it lifted, the operation was performed with the greatest facility. We should observe that, at this time, the fore-topmast was merely struck, and none of its rigging displaced. The celerity with which the Imperieuse was hove down and refitted did not fail to attract the notice of Sir Edward Pellew, who was then at Minorca with his fleet, and who not only complimented Lieutenant Travers in words, but several times invited him to his table on board the Caledonia.
In the beginning of 1813, we find Lieutenant Travers volunteering to undertake the destruction of a large signal tower, near the mouth of the Tiber, which service he accomplished after routing a party of dragoons, with whose commander’s abandoned horse and its trappings he returned on board safely. He afterwards superintended the embarkation of two ship loads of timber, which had been collected on the Roman coast for the use of the arsenal at Toulon, but the destination of which Captain Duncan had thought proper to alter. His succeeding exploits were thus officially reported in a letter from Captain the Hon. George H. L. Dundas, of
