On my arrival at dear home I found all I loved in [pg 334]good health. My excellent wife and affectionate boys and girls clung round me, and I was as happy as an innocent sucking pig, or, if my reader thinks the simile not in place, as happy as a city alderman at a turtle feast.
A few days after my appearance at the Admiralty I was ordered to proceed to Portsmouth, to undergo my trial for the loss of the ship, which, as a son of the Emerald Isle would say, was no loss at all, as she was retaken afterwards.
My sentence was as honourable to the officers of the court martial as it was to myself. I received my sword from the President, Admiral Sir George Martin, with a high encomium.
The days of my youth have floated by like a dream, and after having been forty-five years in the Navy my remuneration is a hundred and eighty pounds a year, without any prospect of its being increased. If the generality of parents would take my advice they never would send one of their boys into the service without sufficient interest and some fortune. If they do, their child, if he behaves well, may die in his old age, possibly as a lieutenant, with scarcely an income to support himself; and if he should under these circumstances have the misfortune to have married and have children, God, I hope, will help him, for I very much fear no one else will!
Here ends my eventful but matter-of-fact history, which, if it has afforded my reader any amusement, my pains are well repaid.
APPENDIX.
Note A.
If the French accounts are to be credited General Rochambeau had a garrison of only 600 men, 400 of whom were militia (cf. “Victoires et Conquêtes,” tome iii., p. 249). At any rate, when Fort Bourbon surrendered the garrison was found to be only 200, including the wounded (cf. James, vol. i., p. 219).