The judge could not stomach such a high-handed claim as this, and his decision set aside the admiral in favor of Captain Dickinson and the crew of the Lightning. The salvage award, however, amounting to £17,000, was decreed as due also to the company of the Algerine, numbering almost four hundred men, which left small pickings for Captain Dickinson and his heroes. This was so obviously unfair that he appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which increased the award by the sum of £12,000, in which Commander the Honorable J. F. F. de Roos and his belated treasure seekers were not entitled to share. The influential committee of Lloyd's thought that Captain Dickinson should not have been so bumptious in defending his rights, and because he disagreed with their opinions, they ignored him in a set of resolutions which speak for themselves:
"1st. A vote of thanks to Admiral Sir Thomas Baker, for his zeal and exertions.
"2nd. The same to Captain de Roos, of the Algerine, and a grant of £2,000 to himself, his officers, and crew, being the amount they would have received had they been parties to the appeal.
"3rd. To mark the sense of the meeting of Captain de Roos's conduct, they further voted to this officer a piece of plate to the value of one hundred guineas."
In other words, an unimportant naval captain deserved this censure because he had not been content to take what was graciously flung at him by Lloyd's and the Admiralty, but had stood up for his rights as long as he had a shot in the locker. There is something almost comic in the figure cut by Commander the Honorable J. F. F de Roos, who reaped the reward of another man's labors and received the formal thanks of Lloyd's as the chief treasure finder of the Thetis frigate. Captain Thomas Dickinson was a dogged and aggressive sort of person, not in the least afraid of giving offense in high places, and had he not been of this stamp of man he would never have fought that winning fight against obstacles amid the hostile cliffs and waters of desolate Cape Frio. He shows his mettle in a fine outburst of protest, the provocation for which was a sentence in a letter published in a London newspaper while his case was under discussion: "Had Captain Dickinson relied on the liberality of Lloyd's Coffee House, he would not have been a poorer man."
This was like a spark in a magazine, and the captain of the Lightning flings back in retort:
"Here, then we arrive at the development of the real feelings of the Underwriters; here is exposed the head and front of my offending. Rely on the liberality of Lloyd's Coffee House!! So that because I would not abandon my duty to my officers and crew, or separate my interests from theirs, and place myself and them at the mercy of the Underwriters, therefore the enterprise and the services of fourteen months, besides the rescue of nearly six hundred thousand dollars, are to be considered as utterly unworthy of mention. Can it be necessary, in order to entitle a British officer to honorable mention in Lloyd's Coffee House that he should abandon a right, and succumbing to the feet of its mighty Committee, accept a donation, doled out with all the ostentation of a gratuitous liberality, in place of that reward which legally took precedence even of the ownership of the property rescued!!"
[[1]] The matter quoted in this chapter is from the privately printed account by Captain Dickinson (London, 1836), entitled, "A Narrative of the Operations for the Recovery of the Public Stores and Treasure sunk in H.M.S. Thetis, at Cape Frio on the coast of Brazil, on the Fifth December, 1830, to which is prefixed a Concise Account of the Loss of that Ship."
[[2]] Dredged.
[[3]] Portable machines used as capstans.