“This season at Newfoundland was passed in the same course of active exertion as the former one.  We sailed for Cadiz and Lisbon in October, for the purpose of receiving any remittances in bullion to England, which the British merchants might have ready on our arrival.  We had light winds and fine weather after making the coast of Portugal.  On one remarkably fine day, when the ship was stealing through the water under the influence of a gentle breeze, the people were all below at their dinners, and scarcely a person left on deck but officers, of whom the captain was one.  Two little ship-boys had been induced, by the fineness of the weather, to run up from below the moment they had dined, and were at play on the spare anchor to leeward, which overhangs the side of the ship.  One of them fell overboard, which was seen from the quarter-deck, and the order was given to luff the ship into the wind.  In an instant the officers were over the side; but it was the captain who, grasping a rope firmly with one hand, let himself down to the water’s edge, and catching hold of the poor boy’s jacket as he floated past, he saved his life in as little time as I have taken to mention it.  There was not a rope touched, or a sail altered in doing this, and the people below knew not of the accident until they came on deck when their dinner was over.

“In every instance when a life was in danger, he was instant to peril his own for its preservation; and I could fill pages, if it were necessary to notice any but those which I was so fortunate as to witness.”

After the Winchelsea had been paid off in 1789, Captain Pellew was appointed to the Salisbury, 50, bearing the flag of Vice-Admiral Milbanke, on the Newfoundland station; in which he served till 1791.  His brother Israel became the first lieutenant, and was promoted from her.  While in this ship, he was one day required to decide on the case of a seaman belonging to a merchant vessel in the harbour, who came on board to complain that his captain had punished him for a theft.  Finding that the captain had acted illegally, though the man had really deserved a far more severe punishment, he said to the complainant, “You have done quite right in coming here:  your captain had no business to punish you as he has done, and that he may learn to be more cautious in future, we order him to be fined—­a shilling!” The man turned to leave the cabin, much disappointed at the award; but how was his surprise increased, when Captain Pellew said, “Stop, sir; we must now try you for the theft.”  The fact, which had been already admitted, allowed of no defence; and before the man left the ship, he was deservedly brought to the gangway.

The admiral’s secretary, Mr. Graham, afterwards the well-known police magistrate, related this circumstance to Lord Thurlow.  The chancellor relaxed his iron features, and throwing himself back in his chair in a burst of laughter, exclaimed, “Well, if that is not law, it is at least justice.  Captain Pellew ought to have been a judge.”