The offer of a command in the Russian navy gave him an opportunity to escape from his difficulties. It was recommended to him by an officer of high character, with whom he had served, and who possessed so many claims upon his confidence that he thought it right to strengthen his own decision by the opinion of his elder brother, before he finally refused it. His brother, who had always encouraged his every ambitious, and every honourable feeling, and who, even at this time, confidently anticipated for him a career of high distinction, of which, indeed, his past life afforded ample promise, would not for a moment listen to his entering a foreign service. He said, that every man owes his services, blood, and life, so exclusively to his own country that he has no right to give them to another; and he desired Captain Pellew to reflect how he would answer for it to his God, if he lost his life in a cause which had no claim upon him. These high considerations of patriotism and religion are the true ground upon which the question should rest. Deeply is it to be regretted that men of high character should have unthinkingly sanctioned by their example what their own closer reflection might have led them to condemn. Still more is it to be deplored that deserving officers, hopeless, in the present state of the navy, (1834) of promotion, or employment, should be driven by their necessities to sacrifice their proudest and most cherished feelings, and to quit for a foreign flag the service of which they might become the strength and ornament. War is too dreadful a calamity to be lightly incurred. Only patriotism, with all its elevating and endearing associations of country, homes, and altars, can throw a veil over its horrors, and a glory around its achievements: patriotism, which gives to victory all its splendour; sheds lustre even on defeat; and hallows the tomb of the hero, fallen amidst the regrets and admiration of his country. But he who goes forth to fight the battles of another State, what honour can victory itself afford to him? or how shall he be excused, if he attack the allies of his own country, whom, as such, he is bound on his allegiance to respect?
The decision of Captain Pellew on this occasion proved as fortunate as it was honourable. At the beginning of 1793, there was no appearance of hostilities; and when the French republicans put to death their king, on the 21st of January, and declared war against England twelve days after, the Government, which had made no preparation for such an event, was taken by surprise almost as much as the country. The navy was on the peace establishment, with only sixteen thousand seamen and marines; and it became necessary in the course of the year to raise for it sixty thousand men. Mr. Pellew, whose situation at Falmouth enabled him to obtain the earliest information, hastened to Treverry as soon as he saw that war was likely to break out, and advised his brother immediately to offer his services to the Admiralty in person. Captain Pellew, too happy in the prospect of exchanging the ploughshare for the sword, returned with him to Falmouth; and the same night was on the road to London.
He was immediately appointed to the Nymphe, of thirty-six guns, formerly a French frigate, which, by a striking coincidence, had been taken by boarding in the former war, after having been disabled by the loss of her wheel. He fitted her with extraordinary dispatch; but from the number of ships commissioned at the same time, there was great difficulty in manning her. Anticipating this, Captain Pellew wrote to Falmouth as soon as he had received his appointment, and adverting to the importance of getting his ship to sea quickly, he requested his brother to assist him in procuring a crew—of sailors, if possible; but if not, then of Cornish miners.
The choice may appear extraordinary, but Cornish miners are better calculated to make seamen than any other class of landsmen; not so much because they are always accustomed to difficult climbing, and familiar with the use of ropes, and gunpowder, as that the Cornish system of mining, with an order and discipline scarcely surpassed in a ship of war, compels the lowest workman to act continually upon his own judgment. Thus it creates that combination of ready obedience, with intelligence, and promptitude at resource, which is the perfection of a sailor's character. Familiarity with danger gives the miner a cool and reflective intrepidity; and the old county sport of wrestling, so peculiarly a game of strength and skill, now falling into disuse, but then the daily amusement of every boy, was admirably calculated to promote the activity and self-possession necessary in personal conflicts.
Captain Pellew's quick discrimination is remarkably shown in thus discovering the capabilities of a class of men, who had never before been similarly tried, and with whom he could have had comparatively but little acquaintance There were no mines in the immediate neighbourhood of anyplace where he had lived; and as his professional habits were not likely to give him an interest in the subject, he had probably never held much intercourse with miners, except when he might have met them as rioters. For at that period, the attention of the west countrymen was devoted almost exclusively to their mines and fisheries, to the neglect of agriculture; and the county being thus dependent upon importations, famine was not uncommon. At such times, the poor tinners would come into the towns, or wherever they had reason to believe that corn was stored, with their bags, and their money, asking only barley-bread, and offering the utmost they could give for it, but insisting that food should be found for them at a price they could afford to pay. If the law must condemn such risings, humanity would pity them for the cause, and justice must admire the forbearance displayed in them. At one of these seasons of distress, when there was a great quantity of corn in the customhouse cellars at Falmouth, a strong body of miners came in to insist that it should be sold. Mr. Pellew, the collector, met them in the street, and explained to them the circumstances under which he was entrusted with it, and which left him no power to sell. They were famishing men, and the corn was in their power; but they had come to buy, and famine itself, with the almost certainty of impunity, could not tempt them to steal. They received his explanation, and left the town peaceably.
About eighty miners entered for the Nymphe and joined her at Spithead. She sailed on her passage from Spithead to Falmouth very badly manned, having not more than a dozen seamen on board, exclusive of the officers, who were obliged to go aloft to reef and furl the sails, the captain setting the example wherever anything was to be done, and often steering the ship. A corporal of marines was captain of the forecastle. Arriving at Falmouth, after a rough passage, she soon picked up a few good men. She took a convoy from thence to the Nore, another from the Nore to Hamburgh, and a third from Cuxhaven to the Nore again; never letting slip an opportunity to press as many men as could be spared from the merchant-ships. The captain would remain in a boat all night, and think himself amply repaid if he obtained only one good man. From the Nore, she returned to Spithead, and thence sailed on a cruize, in company with the Venus, Captain Jonathan Faulknor, having now a full proportion of good seamen, though she was still short of her complement, and none of the crew had ever seen a shot fired. She parted company with the Venus in chase, but rejoined her on the 29th of May. On the 27th, the Venus had engaged the French frigate Semillante, one of a squadron then cruizing in the Channel under the orders of Captain Mullon, of the Cleopatra. The action had continued two hours, much to the disadvantage of the enemy, when the Cleopatra was seen coming up, and the Venus was obliged to fly. On the Nymphe rejoining her, the two frigates went in pursuit of the enemy as far as Cherbourg. Thence Captain Pellew proceeded to the North Channel, where some French cruisers were reported to have gone; but having swept the Channel without seeing anything of them, and taken on board his brother Israel, then living, a commander on half-pay, at Larne, he returned to Falmouth. Here, on the 16th of June, the Nymphe pressed the crew of a South-seaman, which full manned the ship.
She sailed from Falmouth on the evening of the 18th. That afternoon, Captain Pellew was informed that two French frigates had again been seen in the Channel, and he discussed with his brother Israel, at their elder brother's table, the course most likely to intercept them. After they had talked over the advantages of sailing along the English or the French coast, they at length determined to keep mid-channel.
An active and most anxious pursuit of the enemy for the last three weeks had made the crew not less eager than their commander; and the subject of the expected battle engrossed their sleeping and waking thoughts. A dream of Captain Israel Pellew had perhaps some influence on the result. His brother would not allow him to be called till they were just closing the French frigate, and meeting him as he ran on deck half dressed, he said to him, with much emotion,—"Israel, you have no business here! We are too many eggs from one nest. I am sorry I brought you from your wife." But Israel, whose whole attention was occupied with the enemy, exclaimed, "That's the very frigate I've been dreaming of all night! I dreamt that we shot away her wheel. We shall have her in a quarter of an hour!" His brother, who had already inferred her high state of discipline from her manoeuvres, replied, "We shall not take her so easily. See how she is handled." He was a perfect artillerist, and, prompted by the suggestions of his sleep, he took charge of a gun, made the wheel his object, and ultimately shot it away. Not less extraordinary was the dream of a master's mate, Mr. Pearse, who had served in the Winchelsea. He dreamt that the Nymphe fell in with a French frigate the day after leaving port, that they killed her captain, and took her; and so vivid was the impression, that he firmly believed it to be a supernatural intimation, and spoke of it accordingly to his messmates. They rallied him immoderately on his superstition, but his confidence remained unshaken; and when his papers were examined after his death, for he was killed in the action, it was found that he had written the dream in his pocket-book.
At day break on the 19th, as they were proceeding up Channel, being still some miles to the westward of the Start, a sail was observed in the south-east, winch was soon made out to be a French frigate. Before six o'clock they had approached very near, the enemy making no attempt to escape; and, indeed, if both nations had wished at this early period of the war to try the merit of their respective navies by a battle, no ship could have been better calculated than the Cleopatra to maintain the honour of her flag. Her commander, Captain Mullon, was deservedly considered one of the most able officers of the French marine. As Suffren's captain, he had taken a prominent part in the actions with Sir Edward Hughes in the East Indies; and the code of signals then used along the French coast was his own invention. The Cleopatra had been more than a year in commission, and, with such a commander, it may be supposed that her crew had been well trained to all their duties. Indeed, it was known that the enemy had taken great pains in the equipment of their cruizers; and the generally inferior description of the English crews, inevitable from the circumstance that a navy was to be commissioned at once, had led to great apprehensions for the result of the first action. The seaman-like style in which the Cleopatra was handled did not escape the eye of Captain Pellew; who, conscious of his own disadvantage, from the inexperience of his ship's company, determined to avail himself of the power which the enemy's gallantry afforded him, to bring the ships at once to close action, and let courage alone decide it.
In the courage of his men he placed the firmest reliance; and when he addressed a few words to them, before they closed with the enemy, he knew how to suggest the most effectual encouragement in a situation so new to them all. To the miners, he appealed by their honour and spirit as Cornishmen; a motive which the feelings of his own bosom told him would, above all things, animate theirs. Probably there is no place where local pride prevails so strongly as in the west of Cornwall. The lower classes, employed for the most part in pursuits which require the constant exercise of observation and judgment, and familiarized to danger in their mines and fisheries, are peculiarly thoughtful and intrepid; while the distinctness of name and character which they derive from the almost insular position of their county, and the general ignorance of strangers in the interesting pursuits with which they are so familiar, have taught the lower classes to regard it less as an integral part of England, than a distinct and superior country. They have a nobler motive for this feeling, in the successes of their forefathers against the arms of the rebel parliament, when their loyalty, unwavering amidst prosperous treason, and their victories over superior discipline and numbers, obtained for them the grateful eulogy of their unfortunate sovereign. His letter remains painted, as he directed, in a conspicuous part of their older churches, a most honourable monument of their virtues and his gratitude. No man could be prouder of his county than Captain Pellew himself; and, as it was an object much coveted by the most promising of its young men to serve in his ship, and he continued steadily to patronize those who showed themselves deserving, there is scarcely a town in it from which he has not made officers. Thus his feelings were in perfect unison with theirs; and never was an appeal made with greater confidence, or answered with higher spirit, than when he reminded them of their home.