1
The Log of a Privateersman
CHAPTER ONE.
THE CAPTURE OF THE WEYMOUTH--AND WHAT IT LED TO.
The French probably never did a more audacious thing than when, on the night of October 26th, 1804, a party of forty odd of them left the lugger Belle Marie hove-to in Weymouth Roads and pulled, with muffled oars, in three boats, into the harbour; from whence they succeeded in carrying out to sea the newly-arrived West Indian trader Weymouth, loaded with a full cargo of rum, sugar, and tobacco. The expedition was admirably planned, the night chosen being that upon which the new moon occurred; it was a dismal, rainy, and exceptionally dark night, with a strong breeze blowing from the south-west; the hour was about two o'clock a.m.; there was an ebb tide running; and the ship--which had only arrived late in the afternoon of the previous day--was the outside vessel in a tier of three; the Frenchman had, therefore, nothing whatever to do but to cut the craft adrift and allow her to glide, silent as a ghost, down the harbour with bare poles, under the combined influence of the strong wind and the ebb tide. There was not a soul stirring about the quays at that hour; nobody, therefore, saw the ship go out; and the two custom-house officers and the watchman--the only Englishmen aboard her--were fast asleep, and were secured before they had time or opportunity to raise an alarm. So neatly, indeed, was the trick done that the first intimation poor old Peter White--the owner of the ship and cargo--had of his loss was when, at the first streak of dawn, he slipped out of bed and