The object of his attack, La Cerbere, was moored with springs on her cable, within pistol-shot of three batteries, surrounded with armed vessels, and not a mile from a seventy-four and a frigate.  Notwithstanding her formidable position, and though her crew were prepared, while the boats of the Amethyst and Viper had not been able to keep up with the cutter, he pushed on with the single boat, and made a dash at the brig’s quarter.  In the act of springing on board, he became entangled in a trawl-net, and before he could disengage himself, he was pierced through the thigh with a pike, and knocked back into the boat.  Still undismayed, they boarded the brig further ahead, and after a desperate struggle on her deck, carried her.  Of the boat’s crew, one man was killed, and eight wounded; the brig had six killed, and twenty wounded.  The other boats now came up, and the prize was towed out under a heavy, but ineffectual fire from the batteries.

This very brilliant action was rewarded with peculiar notice.  The squadron gave up the prize to the captors; Earl St. Vincent presented Mr. Coghlan with a sword; and a most unusual distinction, he was immediately made a lieutenant by an order in council, though, by the regulations of the service, he had still to serve a year and a half before he would be entitled to promotion.

A few days after, Sir J.B.  Warren arrived, with a small squadron and a fleet of transports; and having re-embarked the troops from Houat, and taken the Impetueux under his orders, proceeded to attack Ferrol.  The fleet arrived in the bay of Playa de Dominos on the 25th of August, and Sir James Pulteney, the military commander-in-chief, desired that the troops might be landed immediately.  The direction of this service was committed to Sir Edward Pellew, who first silenced a fort of eight twenty-four pounders by the fire of the Impetueux, assisted by the Brilliant, 28-gun frigate, Cynthia, sloop of war, and St. Vincent gun-boat; and landed the whole army the same evening, without losing a man.  Sixteen field-pieces were landed at the same time, and the sailors got them, with the scaling ladders, to the heights above Ferrol.

A slight skirmish took place on the first advance of the troops, and a sharper one next morning; but the enemy were effectually driven back, and the heights which command the harbour of Ferrol gained, with the loss in all of sixteen men killed, and five officers and sixty-three men wounded.  Six sail of the line, two of them large first-rates, were in the harbour.  Sir James now resolved to abandon the enterprise.  Sir Edward entreated that he might be allowed to lead on with his sailors, for he was confident that the town must yield.  But Sir James—­to the intense disappointment and indignation of Sir Edward, who refused afterwards and in consequence even to meet him at dinner—­declined to advance, and the troops and guns were all re-embarked without loss the same night.  It was afterwards ascertained, that the garrison, despairing of effectual resistance, were prepared to surrender the keys.