and, for fear of arousing
the jealousy of officers to whom he was junior in the service. What
followed is matter of history, and needs not to be recapitulated.
Yet for the destruction of that powerful armament he neither received
reward nor thanks from the Admiralty, though rewarded by his sovereign
with the highest order of the Bath, a distinction which marked his
Majesty's sense of the important service rendered.

Nine years afterwards head money was awarded to the whole fleet,
of which only the vessels directed by Lord Cochrane and a few sent
afterwards, when too late for effective measures, took part in the
action. The alleged reason of this award was that the _Calcutta_, one
of the ships driven ashore by Lord Cochrane, did not surrender to him,
but to ships sent to his assistance. This was not true, though after
protracted deliberation so ruled by the Admiralty Court, and officers
now living and present in the action have recently come forward to
testify to the ship being in Lord Cochrane's possession before the
arrival of the ships which subsequently came to his assistance. A
small sum was therefore only awarded to him as a junior captain, in
common with those who had been spectators only, and this he declined
to receive. Such was his recompense for a service to the high merit of
which Napoleon himself afterwards testified in the warmest manner; and
it may be mentioned as a further testimony that a French Court Martial
shot Captain Lafont, the commander of the _Calcutta_, because he
surrendered to a vessel of inferior power, viz., Lord Cochrane's
frigate, the _Imperieuse_ of forty-four guns, the _Calcutta_ carrying
sixty guns.[A]

[Footnote A: Captain Lafont was shot on board the _Ocean_, on
September 9, 1809, _for surrendering the Calcutta to a ship of
inferior force_, thus proving that she surrendered to Lord Cochrane
alone, though Sir William Scott ruled in opposition to the facts
adopted by the French Court Martial, which condemned Captain Lafont
to death for the act. The surrender to Lord Cochrane alone is further
proved by the additional fact, that the captains of the _Ville de
Varsovie_ and _Aquilon_, which _did_ surrender to the other ships in
conjunction with Lord Cochrane's frigate, were not even accused, much
less punished for so doing.]

The exploits of Lord Cochrane in the _Speedy_ and _Pallas_ are too
well known in naval history to require recapitulation, and of these
it may be said that the nume