A civil court was assembled nearly about the same time, to try an assault, the action for which was brought by Mr. Matthew Austin (a gentleman who came out in the Marquis Cornwallis, as a superintending surgeon of the convicts in that ship, on the part of government) against Mr. Michael Hogan the commander, Mr. John Hogan the surgeon, and Henry Hacking the pilot.  The circumstances of the assault being proved, the court adjudged Mr. M. Hogan to pay damages to the amount of fifty pounds; the others were acquitted.

On Mr. McClellan’s arrival from Bengal, he reminded us, that some property had been found concealed in the bed of one of our people, which property had been shown to him at the time, under a supposition that it might have been stolen from his ship.  On his return to India, he found that a small bale, containing the very articles which had been shown him here, had been put on board him at Bengal, to be delivered as a present to a gentleman at Batavia, the initials of whose name were marked on the bale.  On his stating these circumstances to the judge-advocate, that part of the property which had been found, and placed in the custody of the provost-marshal, was given up to Mr. McClellan.  Rogers, who had been either the principal or the receiver, perhaps foreseeing that the offence might sooner or later be brought home to him, had taken himself off in the Endeavour, and was one of those persons who had been unavoidably left behind at Dusky Bay by Mr. Waine when he quitted that place in the Assistance.

From the address with which this business must have been managed, masters of ships might see the necessity that existed for their keeping a vigilant eye over the people whom they admitted on their decks, and be perfectly assured, that many visited them for the express purpose of discovering what vigilance was observed by the master, his mates, and people.  Many instances of this kind had occurred, although it might have been readily supposed, that a stranger would have been on his guard, and never have lost the idea of the description of people by whom he was likely to be visited.  A large quantity of tobacco had been stolen out of the Bellona storeship shortly after she arrived here; half a cask of gunpowder had been stolen out of the Britannia, at the very time that the master was entertaming some of the gentlemen of the settlement in the cabin; Mr. Page, the master of the American ship Hope, was robbed of several articles, and the buckles out of his shoes, which stood in the cabin wherein he lay asleep; and this theft of the bale from on board the Experiment was an additional instance of the management and ability displayed by our people in conducting an affair of that kind.