1810. We next find him serving as lieutenant under Captain (now Sir Charles M.) Schomberg, in the Astraea frigate, on the Cape station. His promotion to that rank took place Feb. 11th, 1812; and his next appointment, to the Hermes 20, Captain the Hon. William Henry Percy, fitting out for the North American station, April 18th, 1814. The circumstances which led to the destruction of the latter ship, on the coast of West Florida, Sept. 5th, 1814, are detailed in two official letters, written by her truly gallant commander, and of which we have given copies in Suppl. Part III. pp. 64–69. In one of them he makes honorable mention of Lieutenant Matthews, who, it appears, assisted him in performing the painful duty of setting the ship on fire, after all the other surviving officers and crew had been safely removed from her. We have only here to add an expression of our regret that the same deliberate valor and seamanlike conduct which were displayed on board the Hermes, in the attack upon Fort Bowyer, had not been brought to bear on an adversary of more equal force, in which case a much happier result might have been confidently expected.
After this sanguinary affair, Lieutenant Matthews volunteered to serve with the army acting against New Orleans, and assisted in the successful dash across the Mississippi, on the fatal morning of Jan. 8th, 1815[1]. In the following year, he was appointed senior lieutenant of the Alert sloop, Commander John Smith (b), on the North Sea station, where, in one of that vessel’s gallies, he captured a smuggling lugger. In 1817, he took command of the Drake revenue cruiser, on the Land’s End and Scilly station; and, considering the very low ebb to which the contraband trade has been happily reduced in that quarter, was not unfortunate in the number of his captures. He obtained his present rank on the 19th July, 1822; and subsequently commanded the Surinam and Icarus sloops, on the West India station. His last voyage appears to have been in an element not much navigated by gentlemen of the naval profession – we allude to his
