On the 6th the Charon was detached ahead of the squadron to look into the Delaware to ascertain if the French fleet was still there. We obeyed the order with alacrity, though we expected that if they were there we should be very quickly chased out again. We had great hopes that this would be done, as we might thus lead them down upon our own squadron which was well prepared to receive them. O’Driscoll rubbed his hands as we sailed up that magnificent estuary, keeping a bright look-out on every side for the mast-heads of the enemy’s fleet.
“Arrah, now, won’t it be fun to see them all come bounding out like bulldogs when by chance a stranger comes suddenly into the courtyard where they are chained up, all barking, and leaping, and pulling with the amiable wish of tearing him to pieces!” he exclaimed, as I was expressing a hope that they might still be found there.
On we sailed, till at last we felt convinced that the Frenchmen had already put to sea. Once more therefore we stood out again in search of the Admiral. On the 11th we spoke the Chatham, which ship had also been sent to look-out for the enemy. She had taken a prize, and from her had gained the information that a large fleet of merchantmen was in the neighbourhood, bound from Saint Domingo to Philadelphia under the convoy of the Dean and Confederacy State frigates.
I ought to have said that we had hove-to, and that Captain Ord of the Chatham had come on board us, Captain Symonds being the senior officer. Captain Ord now proposed that we should in company cruise off the heads of the Delaware in the hopes of intercepting this valuable convoy. Once more there appeared a certain prospect of my picking up an ample supply of prize-money, but greatly to our disappointment; Captain Symonds declined to accede to the proposal, though he allowed Captain Ord to remain if he thought fit. This Captain Ord said he should do, and returned on board the Chatham, while we made sail to the northward. That evening I heard Nol Grampus holding forth on the subject.
“I knew it would be so,” he exclaimed, clapping his right hand down on his hat, which he held in his left; “our ship’s got ill-lack in her sails, depend on that. I don’t say nothing against our skipper; what he does is all right and above board, and a better man nor officer never stepped a deck, but, mark my words, that ’ere ‘Chatham’s’ people now will be filling their pockets with gold dollars, while we shan’t have a penny piece to chink in ours; as for our ship, I knows what I knows, and I thinks what I thinks.”
The effect of old Nol’s remarks were, however, counteracted before long, for on the 13th we sighted a large brig, which immediately stood away from us. We, therefore, made sail in chase. She sailed so fast we had to do our best to come up with her. It seemed, however, doubtful whether we should do so. Nol shook his head, and remarked that night would come down, and that she would slip away before we could overhaul her. Hour after hour passed. It was evident that we were gaining on her, and at length, at the end of a chase of seven hours we came up with the stranger, when she struck her flag and proved to be the Peggy, rebel privateer, of fourteen guns and seventy men, loaded with rum and indigo, from Carolina to Philadelphia.
On our arrival at New York with our prize, we had the mortification to find that the admiral approved of Captain Ord’s proposition, and still greater was our annoyance to hear a few days afterwards that he, with the Roebuck and Orpheus, had taken the Confederacy and several of her convoy.
And now I was engaged in a scene, to do proper justice to which completely baffles all my powers of description. The fleet were sadly in want of men. By some means or other they must be procured. New York was, we heard, full of seafaring men, boatmen and others, accustomed to the water, whom the war had driven from their usual vocations, and who were now living on shore. To get hold of these was our object. It would not do to attempt to capture them by driblets, for if a few were pressed, the rest would take alarm and hide away where we were not likely to find them. The admiral’s plans were quickly and secretly formed. All the boats of the fleet were ordered to assemble, with the crews well armed, by break of day, on board the Rainbow. Silently we pulled in for the city much in the same way that we should have attempted to surprise a place held by an enemy. Having completely surrounded all the lower parts of the town inhabited by the class of men we wanted, we commenced our press. While one portion of our force were told off to keep guard, the others broke into every house without ceremony, where there was a probability of finding men. Very seldom we stopped to knock for admission. Generally the door was forced open, and in we rushed, seizing the husband from the arms of his wife, and very often allowing him scarcely time to put on his clothes, while we were compelled to endure the bitter invectives, the tears, the screams, and abuse of his wife, whom we were thus cruelly robbing. Sometimes the men, aided by their better halves, made an attempt at resistance, but were speedily overpowered, bound hand and foot, and carried off. Often, too, we fell in with young men of a better class, mates of merchantmen and others lately married; and truly pitiable was it to witness the grief and agony of the poor young wives as they saw their husbands in the power of our rough-looking and seemingly heartless press-gangs. They did not scream; they did not abuse us; but often on their knees, with tears and sighs, they implored us to release those who had become dearer to them than life itself. These appeals I found harder to withstand than anything else, and had to steel my heart and to assume a roughness which I did not feel, to resist giving way to their entreaties. I did, as it was, all I could to assure them that their husbands would soon again be at liberty; though I might have remembered, had I thought more about it, how bitterly they would be disappointed. In too many instances, husbands and wives then parted, never met again. Fathers, also, were torn from their children, leaving them desolate indeed; young sons were carried off from their parents. We had not time to stop to listen to any remonstrances. Men must be had at every cost. The only question asked was, “Have you a protection?” If not, seamen, and often landsmen, if they were stout fellows, were bound hand and foot and carried off to the boats. I would have given much to have allowed one young man, especially, to escape. He had been aroused by the noise in the street, and was sitting up dressed when we entered his house, holding his wife in his arms. She was a fragile, delicate-looking girl, soon about to become a mother. I felt almost sure when I saw the couple that the shock would kill her.
“You will not take him, sir?” she said, calmly appealing to me as I entered the room in which my men had just seized him, though even they were inclined to treat him with some delicacy. “He has been an officer, sir. You will not carry him off and make a common seaman of him? Oh, sir, he is my husband, he does not wish to leave me. Let him, let him remain!”
This simple and artless appeal affected me much.