The Keith Papers

39. Markham to Keith

Admiralty,
November 8, 1803.

My dear Lord, I am very glad to find you gave the orders not to make these fruitless attacks in the future. Our ships would be crippled when we have most occasion for them. We should be glad to hear what became of the brig driven on shore by Lt. Shepard, and as your Lordship has written to enquire I should be glad for a communication of the result. I enclose back Capt. Hotham’s letter. He is a fine young man, one, I believe, that may be trusted. Pray what is become of Sir Sidney? I fear that he will neither keep his station off Flushing, or that he will do some odd act which will annoy us. Is it true, as some papers state, that having landed some seamen among the sandhills, they were made prisoners? It only states that this was so, and that the Antelope did it.* However, it looks like Sir S. [Smith]. We have just got the telegraph despatch that the Conflict has brought in a gunboat with 30 soldiers on board. It will make as much noise as the capture of a ship of the line. Yours &c.

J. MARKHAM.

* On October 14 Smith made a landing on an island in the Texel. In a letter to Markham (Letters of Markham. 113) of November 4, Keith says ‘Sir Sidney has never yet appeared off Flushing. Six of his officers and some men had been sent on shore and could not regain the ship. . . All this I had from Captain Bligh, for neither the Commodore nor the Admiral (Montagu) told me anything of it. On November 11 Markham speaks of Smith as ‘this wild man who will get us into a scrape.’ For St. Vincent’s dissatisfaction with Montagu (whom he replaced by Patton). see St. Vincent Letters, II. 385.