m or exchange.
They arrived at Plymouth on the 7th of March following.

The Admiralty awarded head-money to the frigates for the destruction of
the _Droits de l'Homme_. As there were no means of knowing her
complement with certainty, Sir Edward wrote to Commodore Lacrosse to
request the information, telling him it was the practice of his
Government to award a certain sum for every man belonging to an enemy's
armed vessel taken, or destroyed. The Commodore answered, that the
_Droits de l'Homme_ had been neither taken nor destroyed, but that the
ships had fought like three dogs till they all fell over the cliff
together. Her crew, with the troops, he said, was sixteen hundred men.

The gallant captain of the _Amazon_, one of the earliest and closest
friends of Sir Edward Pellew, perished at length by a not less
distressing shipwreck. At the end of 1811, being then a rear-admiral, he
was returning from the Baltic in the _St. George_, a ship not calculated
to remain so late on such a station. After having received much damage
in a former gale, she was wrecked on Christmas-day, as well as the
_Defence_, which attended her to afford assistance; and only eighteen
men were saved from the two line-of-battle ships. Rear-Admiral Reynolds
and his captain remained at their post till they sunk under the
inclemency of a northern winter; when, stretched on the quarter-deck,
and hand in hand, they were frozen to death together.

FOOTNOTE:

[7] Naval Chronicle, vol. viii. p. 467.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MUTINY.

In less than four years Sir Edward had fought as many severe actions,
and the number of his successes is even less remarkable than the very
small loss with which he generally obtained them. Against the
_Cleopatra_, indeed, where he engaged a superior and skilful opponent
with an inexperienced crew, he suffered much; but he lost only three men
in taking the _Pomone_, and none in his actions with the _Virginie_ and
the _Droits de l'Homme_. The same impunity continued to attend him; for
not a dozen were killed on board his own ships through all the rest of
his life.[8] Results so uniform, and applying to so long a service,
cannot be ascribed to accidental causes.

By his seamanship, his example, a strictness which suffered no duty to
be neglected, and a kindness which allowed every safe indulgence, he
would quickly bring a ship's company to a high state of discipline. In
the language of an officer who served with him for