THE LAST OF NELSON'S CAPTAIN'S.

Grey River Argus, Volume VII, Issue 515, 6 May 1869, Page 4

THE LAST OF NELSON'S CAPTAIN'S.

(By Tom Hughes in Macmillan's Magazine. ) On the Bth of January the last survivor of Nelson's captains, the Paladins of the great war, Bank to his rest calmly at Greenwich, a hale old sea-king of eightysix Sir James A. Gordon had been Governor of the Hospital since 1853, and became Admiral of the Fleet just a year since, on the 30th of January 1868, He entered the navy in November 1793, at the mature age of ten years, straight from his father's house J£ildrummie Qastle, Aberdeen j was posted in May, 1805, several years before the Premier waa born ; and had been nine times gazetted for conspicuous gallantry in the face of an enemy while Mr Gladstone was still in the nursery, The race to which he belonged stands out as clearly as Napoleon's marshals, of whom they were the contemporaries. Nelson's captains, now that we can look at them as a group of historical personages, strike us as on the whole the most daring set of men ever thrown together for one work. Were it not for their uniform success, and the thoroughness with which they carried through that work, one might be inclined to call them foolhardy disciples of the chief who " did not know Mr Fear." As a boy, Sir James fought in the general actions, under Lord Bridport, at Cape St. Vincent and the Nile, and took part in a dozen minor engagements and cuttings-out which are chronicled in the faithful pages of James. But it was not until 1811 that his great chance in life came, In that year he was captain of the Active frigate, cruising in the Adriatic under Hoste. They were three frigates and a 22-gun ship, the Volage, when off Lissa a French and Venetian fleet of six frigates, a 16-gun corvette, and two gunboats came in sight. Hoste wore at once, and signalled " Remember Nelson," and the four English ships went into action with 128 guns less than the enemy, and 880 men against 2600. In half an hour the Flore, 40-gun frigate, struck to the Active ; but Gordon, without waiting to send a prize crew on board, followed the Corona, another French frigate, and took her within shot of the batteries of Lissa, Meantime, the Flore had stolen away, no one knew where, and the able editors of the day denounced her captain for treachery in not waiting for her captor's return, and blamed Gordon for not securing her. JEoste only remarked that they didn't know Gordon if they thought he would waste a minute on a prize while an enemy's flag was flying. Six months later, in the same waters, Maxwell in the Alceste, and Gordon in the Active, came up and fought through a long autumn day with the Pomone and Pauline, French frigates running for Trieste. Gordon's leg was carried away by a 36-pounder, but the Pauline was taken, and Maxwell brought the sword of Rosamil, the French captain, to Gordon, as his by right. In 1812, Gordon, now with a wooden leg, was again afloat, captain of the Sea Horse ; and in 1814 was under Cochrane on the American station. In August, Cochrane and Ross resolved on the raid on Washington ; and Gordon, with a small squadron, was ordered to sail up the Potomac, in support of the land-forces. He started on the 17th, and struggled up to Fort Washington in ten days. "We were without pilot's," he writes, "to assist us through that difficult part of the river called Kettles Bottoms, consequently each of the ships was aground twenty times, and the crews were employed in warping five whole days. On the 27th he took Fort Washington, and on the next day appeared off Alexandria, and offered terms of capitulation to the town which our cousins found hard of digestion. Washington city had been abandoned by Ross on the 26th, after the public buildings were burned. The whole country was rising, and here was this impudent one-legged captain insisting that the merchant ships which had been sunk on his approach should be delivered to him, with all merchandise on board, or . The army was already back at the coast, there was not the slightest chance of support, and his difficulties were increasing every hour ; but the Alexandrians soon found that nothing but his own terms would get rid of this one-legged man. So the sunk merchantmen were "weighed, masted, hove down, caulked, rigged, and loaded" with the cargoes which had been put ashore, even down .to the cabin furniture, and with twenty- one of them as prizes, at the end of three days Gordon started to run the gauntlet back to the sea, our cousins vowing that they would teach him something about " terms of capitulation" before he got there. And they worked hard to keep their vow, and at one point (name unknown) had nearly effected their purpose by aid of a strong battery and three fireships. But Gordon in the Sea Horse, and Charles Napier in the E\iryalus, anchored at short musket range right off the battery, and succeeded in almost silencing it : a daring middy or two towed away the fireships, and the whole fleet of merchantmen slipped by. And so Gordon got down to the sea, with a total loss of three officers and sixty-one men, after twenty-three days' operations, in which the hammocks were down only two nights. No stranger feat of daring was ever performed than this, now nearly forgotten. His last command was in his old ship the Active, to which he was appointed in 1819 ; and in 1829 he was made superintendent of Plymouth Victualling Yard, at which time, so far as we know, his-work as a fighting-man ceased. Stop — we are wrong ; Cm one occasion the old sea-lion was brought to bay. He attended the coronation of William IV., like a loyal messmate, in full admiral's uniform, witlf his orders, and the gold medal which had been awarded him after Lissa, on his breast. He walked away from the ceremony, and at a narrow street-corner in Westminsterwas hailed by a leading rough

in the crowd, "By God ! that's Jem Gordon. He flogged me in the Active, and now, mates, let's settle hiii," The Admiral put his back to the wall, and looked the fellow in the face. "I don't remember you," said he, " but if 1 flogged yon in the Active, you d d rascal, you deserved it. Come on !" Whereupon the crowd cheered, and suppressed his antagonist/and the Admiral stumped back to his hotel in peace. Even with a wooden leg, he must have been a very formidable man in those days ; for he stood six feet three inches, and had been all his life famous for feats of strength and activity. He could heave the lead further than any man in his best crews, and before his accident had been I known to leap in and out of sb? empty water hogsheads placed in line on the deck, For the last sixteen years he has been living, full of years and honors, at Greenwich ; and now he lies buried amongst his comrades, and has left the grand heritage of an unsullied name to his numerous grandchildren, Heaven keep England from any such war as that in which James A. Gordon earned his good service pension of £300 a-year and his Grand Cross of the Bath ; but, if England is ever fated to endure the like again, Heaven send her such captains as James A. Gordon and his peers.