FATE OF CAPTAIN DEATH.

Perhaps history cannot afford a more remarkable instance of desperate courage than that which was exerted in December of the preceding year, by the officers and crew of an English privateer, named the Terrible, under the command of captain William Death, equipped with twenty-six carriage guns, and manned with two hundred sailors. On the twenty-third day of the month he engaged and made prize of a large French ship from St. Domingo, after an obstinate battle, in which he lost his own brother and sixteen seamen; then he secured with forty men his prize, which contained a valuable cargo, and directed his course to England; but in a few days he had the misfortune to fall in with the Vengeance, a privateer of St. Maloes, carrying thirty-six large cannon, with a complement of three hundred and sixty men. Their first step was to attack the prize, which was easily retaken; then the two ships bore down upon the Terrible, whose main-mast was shot away by the first broadside. Notwithstanding this disaster, the Terrible maintained such a furious engagement against both as can hardly be paralleled in the annals of Britain. The French commander and his second was killed, with two-thirds of his company; but the gallant Captain Death, with the greater part of his officers, and almost his whole crew, having met with the same fate, his ship was boarded by the enemy, who found no more than twenty-six persons alive, sixteen of whom were mutilated by the loss of leg or arm, and the other ten grievously wounded. The ship itself was so shattered, that it could scarce be kept above water, and the whole exhibited a scene of blood, horror, and desolation. The victor itself lay like a wreck on the surface; and in this condition made shift, with great difficulty, to tow the Terrible* into St. Maloes, where she was not beheld without astonishment and terror.

* There was a strange combination of names belonging to this
privateer; the Terrible, equipped at Execution Dock,
commanded by captain Death, whose lieutenant was called
Devil, and who had one Ghost for surgeon.

This adventure was no sooner known in England, than a liberal subscription was raised for the support of Death’s widow, and that part of the crew which survived the engagement. In this, and every sea reincounter that happened within the present year, the superiority in skill and resolution was ascertained to the British mariners; for even when they fought against great odds, their courage was generally crowned with success. In the month of November, captain Lockhart, a young gentleman who had already rendered himself a terror to the enemy as commander of a small frigate, now added considerably to his reputation by reducing the Melampe, a French privateer of Bayonne, greatly superior to his own ship in number of men and weight of metal. This exploit was seconded by another of the same nature, in his conquest of another French adventurer, called the Countess of Gramont; and a third large privateer of Bayonne was taken by captain Saumarez, commander of the Antelope. In a word, the narrow seas were so well guarded, that in a little time scarce a French ship durst appear in the English channel, which the British traders navigated without molestation.