CHAPTER IV.

THE sketch of Captain Heywood will now be continued very nearly in his own language. The memoranda in Captain Heywood's hand-writing, from which the following extracts have been made, are indeed exceedingly imperfect, being drawn up at intervals entirely for private use. But, such as they are, they furnish a tolerable abstract of his naval career; and it appeared to the Editor desirable to preserve as much of his own language as possible, rather than to attempt a less broken, but probably less interesting narrative.

'After visiting my family and friends, and when my health was completely restored,' says Captain Heywood, I re-entered the navy by the desire of Sir Thomas Pasley, and at the express recommendation of Lord Hood, who presided at my courtmartial, and who offered to take me under his own immediate patronage. This, however, my uncle declined; and on the 17th May, 1793, took me under his own command in the Bellerophon. But service in a frigate being more active than in a ship

of the line, I was on the 9th of July removed into the Niger, then commanded by the Hon. Arthur Kaye Legge, where I did duty as master's mate till the 23rd of September, when I was ordered by Lord Howe to join the Queen Charlotte, where his flag was then flying as commander-in-chief of the Channel Fleet. I served in that ship as signal midshipman and master's mate under his Lordship's eye and the commands of Sir Hugh C. Christian and Sir Andrew Snape Douglas, who, together with Sir Roger Curtis, the captain of the Channel Fleet, were all members of the court-martial, and became my most sincere and warm friends, and gave me the strongest and most flattering proofs of their approbation, esteem, and good-will, not only whilst I served under their own immediate observation, but ever afterwards as long as they severally lived. After the defeat of the French fleet on the 1st of June, 1794, (in which action I did my duty on the quarter-deck as one of Sir Andrew Douglas' aidsdu-camp,) and we had returned to Spithead, I was appointed, on the 24th of August in Torbay, acting lieutenant in the Robust, 74, commanded by Captain Thornbrough. But a lieutenant having been previously appointed by the Admiralty without the knowledge of Lord Howe, (as we went to sea that day,) I was of course superseded, on our return to Torbay on the 9th of October, 1794, as were several others at the same time and for the same

reason; and we all consequently returned to the Queen Charlotte, where I remained till the 9th of March, 1795.*

Lord Spencer, who then presided at the Admiralty, was pleased to promote me to the rank of

* Some doubts having arisen about this period as to the propriety of giving naval rank to a person who had been placed in Mr. Heywood's late critical situation, his friend Sir Roger Curtis was kind enough to consult an eminent lawyer, whose opinion on that subject we now lay before our readers.

'The warrant for the execution of some of the offenders, and the pardon of Mr. Heywood, states the charge to have been "for mutinously running away with the armed vessel the Bounty, and deserting from his Majesty's service." This you will find to be the 15th in the catalogue of offences enumerated in the Act of 22 Geo. II. Cap. xxxiii., and it is thereby enacted that the offender shall suffer death. Nothing is said of any incapacities whatever, and indeed it would be strange to have superadded incapacities to a capital punishment.

'The judgments which a court-martial is empowered to pronounce by this Act are of three distinct kinds, the one discretionary, another capital, and a third, incapacity ever to serve in the navy. The last (except so far as it is included in discretionary sentences) is enacted in one instance only. Upon this state of things, it should seem clear that Mr. Heywood having received judgment of death, the only judgment which the act empowers the court-martial to pronounce, and his Majesty having been pleased to dispense with the execution of that sentence, the plain principle of the common law ought to take place, by which Mr. Heywood is in point of capacity to hold any station, civil or military, no way now distinguished from any other subject. You will moreover observe, that the directions of this Act must be literally observed, being in a matter highly penal, and that no disabilities or incapacities can be introduced by inference. I should myself clearly conceive, that an offence attended with judgment of death having been pardoned by his Majesty, the supposed offender is, in this case, in the same situation as if no such judgment had ever been passed.'-Marshall's Naval Biography.

Lieutenant in the Incendiary fire-ship, commanded by Captain John Draper. I remained in her only till the 6th of April following, and on the 7th received a commission as junior Lieutenant of La Nymphe, Captain George Murray, then employed as one of the cruizers on the coast of France, and who afterwards commanded the advance frigates with the fleet, under Lord Bridport, which defeated that of the French, on the 23d of June, 1795, off the Island of Groais (Groix). I remained in the Nymphe with Captain Murray, and afterwards Captain Geo. Losack, in the North Sea, till she was paid off at Plymouth, about the end of the year,

1795.

On the 13th of January, 1796, I was appointed to the Fox, of thirty-two guns, Captain Pulteney Malcolm, and joined her in the Downs. I served in her as third Lieutenant in the North Sea, till we were ordered to the East Indies about June, when I became second, and on our arrival at the Cape of Good Hope, the first Lieutenant being invalided, I became first, and so continued till the 16th of June, 1798, when Captain Malcolm was appointed to command the Suffolk, bearing the flag of RearAdmiral Peter Rainier, and I was removed to that ship along with him.'

To Admiral Rainier Mr. Heywood had been previously recommended for promotion by Earl Spencer, the same nobleman who had signed his first commission, and whose good opinion of him

will be seen by the following copy of a letter to Sir Thomas Pasley:

'I should have returned an earlier answer to your letter of the 6th instant, if I had not been desirous, before I answered it, to look over, with as much attention as was in my power, the proceedings of the court-martial, held in the year 1792, by which Court Mr. Peter Heywood was condemned for being concerned in the mutiny on board the Bounty. I felt this to be necessary, from having entertained a very strong opinion that it might be detrimental to the interests of his Majesty's service, if a person under such a predicament should be afterwards advanced to the higher and more conspicuous situations of the navy; but having, with great attention, perused the minutes of that court-martial, as far as they relate to Mr. Peter Heywood, I have now the satisfaction of being able to inform you, that I think his case was such an one, as, under all its circumstances, (though I do not mean to say that the Court were not justified in their sentence,) ought not to be considered as a bar to his further progress in his profession; more especially when the gallantry and propriety of his conduct, in his subsequent service, are taken into consideration. I shall, therefore, have no difficulty in mentioning him to the commander-in-chief on the station to which he belongs, as a person from whose promotion, on a