The Admiralty awarded head-money to the frigates for the destruction of the Droits de l’Homme.  As there were no means of knowing her complement with certainty, Sir Edward wrote to Commodore Lacrosse to request the information, telling him it was the practice of his Government to award a certain sum for every man belonging to an enemy’s armed vessel taken, or destroyed.  The Commodore answered, that the Droits de l’Homme had been neither taken nor destroyed, but that the ships had fought like three dogs till they all fell over the cliff together.  Her crew, with the troops, he said, was sixteen hundred men.

The gallant captain of the Amazon, one of the earliest and closest friends of Sir Edward Pellew, perished at length by a not less distressing shipwreck.  At the end of 1811, being then a rear-admiral, he was returning from the Baltic in the St. George, a ship not calculated to remain so late on such a station.  After having received much damage in a former gale, she was wrecked on Christmas-day, as well as the Defence, which attended her to afford assistance; and only eighteen men were saved from the two line-of-battle ships.  Rear-Admiral Reynolds and his captain remained at their post till they sunk under the inclemency of a northern winter; when, stretched on the quarter-deck, and hand in hand, they were frozen to death together.

FOOTNOTE: 

[7] Naval Chronicle, vol. viii. p. 467.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MUTINY.

In less than four years Sir Edward had fought as many severe actions, and the number of his successes is even less remarkable than the very small loss with which he generally obtained them.  Against the Cleopatra, indeed, where he engaged a superior and skilful opponent with an inexperienced crew, he suffered much; but he lost only three men in taking the Pomone, and none in his actions with the Virginie and the Droits de l’Homme.  The same impunity continued to attend him; for not a dozen were killed on board his own ships through all the rest of his life.[8] Results so uniform, and applying to so long a service, cannot be ascribed to accidental causes.

By his seamanship, his example, a strictness which suffered no duty to be neglected, and a kindness which allowed every safe indulgence, he would quickly bring a ship’s company to a high state of discipline.  In the language of an officer who served with him for almost thirty years—­“No man ever knew better how to manage seamen.  He was very attentive to their wants and habits.  When he was a captain he personally directed them, and when the duty was over, he was a great promoter of dancing and other sports, such as running aloft, heaving the lead, &c., in which he was himself a great proficient.  He was steady in his discipline, and knew well the proper time to tighten or relax.  He studied much the character of his men, and could soon ascertain whether a man was likely to appreciate forgiveness, or whether he could not be reclaimed without punishment.  During the whole time he commanded frigates, his men had leave in port, one-third at a time, and very rarely a desertion took place.”