Rear Admiral Lord Hornblower, for all his proud appointment as commander-in-chief of His Majesty's ships and vessels in the West Indies, paid his official visit to New Orleans in H.M. schooner Crab, mounting only two six-pounders and with a crew of no more than sixteen men, not counting supernumeraries.
His Britannic Majesty's consul-general at New Orleans, Mr. Cloudesley Sharpe, remarked on the fact.
"I hardly expected to see your lordship in so diminutive a craft," he said, looking round him. He had driven down in his carriage to the pier against which Crab was lying, and had sent his liveried footman to the gangway to announce him, and it had been something of an anticlimax to be received by the trilling of the only two bos'n's calls that Crab could muster, and to find on the quarterdeck to receive him, besides the admiral and his flag lieutenant...