to the despairing multitude.  He was received with three hearty cheers, which were echoed by the thousands on shore; and his promptitude at resource soon enabled him to find and apply the means by which all might be safely landed.  His officers in the mean time, though not knowing that he was on board, were exerting themselves to bring assistance from the Indefatigable.  Mr. Pellowe, first lieutenant, left the ship in the barge, and Mr. Thompson, acting master (son of Mr. Thompson, who had been master of the Nymphe), in the launch; but the boats could not be brought alongside the wreck, and were obliged to run for the Barbican.  A small boat belonging to a merchant vessel was more fortunate.  Mr. Edsell, signal midshipman to the port admiral, and Mr. Coghlan, mate of the vessel, succeeded, at the risk of their lives, in bringing her alongside.  The ends of two additional hawsers were got on shore, and Sir Edward contrived cradles to be slung upon them, with travelling ropes to pass forward and backward between the ship and the beach.  Each hawser was held on shore by a number of men, who watched the rolling of the wreck, and kept the ropes tight and steady.  Meantime, a cutter had with great difficulty worked out of Plymouth pool, and two large boats arrived from the dockyard, under the directions of Mr. Hemmings, the master-attendant, by whose caution and judgment they were enabled to approach the wreck, and receive the more helpless of the passengers, who were carried to the cutter.  Sir Edward, with his sword drawn, directed the proceedings, and preserved order—­a task the more difficult, as the soldiers had got at the spirits before he came on board, and many were drunk.  The children, the women, and the sick, were the first landed.  One of them was only three weeks old; and nothing in the whole transaction impressed Sir Edward more strongly than the struggle of the mother’s feelings before she would entrust her infant to his care, or afforded him more pleasure than the success of his attempt to save it.  Next the soldiers were got on shore; then the ship’s company; and finally.  Sir Edward himself, who was one of the last to leave her.  Every one was saved, and presently after the wreck went to pieces.

Nothing could equal the lustre of such an action, except the modesty of him who was the hero of it.  Indeed, upon all occasions, forward as he was to eulogize the merits of his followers, Sir Edward was reserved almost to a fault upon everything connected with his own services.  The only notice taken of the Dutton, in the journal of the Indefatigable, is the short sentence:—­“Sent two boats to the assistance of a ship on shore in the Sound;” and in his letter to Vice-Admiral Onslow, who had hoisted his flag at Plymouth a day or two before, he throws himself almost out of sight, and ascribes the chief merit to the officer who directed the boats:—­