ployed in the Mediterranean trade. Captain Benbow had grown into high esteem with the merchants of the Royal Exchange as a brave, active, and skilful seaman, when the following singular incident led to his passing into the royal navy. In the year 1686, Captain Benbow, in his own vessel, the Benbow frigate, was attacked in his passage to Cadiz by a Moorish corsair, from that notorious nest of pirates, Salee. Captain Benbow defended himself, though very unequal in the number of men, with the utmost bravery, till at last the Moors boarded him; but were quickly beat out of his ship again with the loss of thirteen men, whose heads Captain Benbow ordered to be cut off, and thrown into a tub of brine. When he arrived at Cadiz he went ashore, and directed a negro servant to follow him, with the Moors' heads in a sack. He had scarcely landed before the officers of the revenue inquired of his servant what he had in his sack. The captain answered, salt provisions for his own use. the officers; but we must insist on seeing them. Captain Benbow alleged that he was no stranger there; that he did not use to run goods, and pretended to take it very ill that he was suspected. The officers told him that the magistrates were sitting not far off, and that if they were satisfied with his word, his servant might carry the provisions where he pleased; but that otherwise it was not in their power to grant such dispensation. That may be, answered The captain consented to the proposal, and away they marched to the custom-house, Captain Benbow in the front, his man in the centre, and the officers in the rear. The magistrates, when he came before. Cæsar, them, treated Captain Benbow with great civility; told him they were sorry to make a point of such a trifle, but that since he had refused to show the contents of his sack to their officers, the nature of their employments obliged them to demand a sight of them; and that, as they doubted not they were salt provisions, the showing them could be of no great consequence one way or other. "I told you," says the captain sternly, "they were salt provisions for my own use. throw them down upon the table; and, gentlemen, if you like them, they are at your service." The Spaniards were astounded at the sight of the Moors' heads, and no less astonished at the account of the captain's adventure, who, with so small a force, had been able to defeat such a number of barbarians. They sent an account of the whole matter to the court of Madrid, and Charles II., then king of Spain, was so much pleased with it, that he would needs see the English captain, who made a journey to court, where he was received with great testimonies of respect, and not only when departing received a handsome present, but his Catholic Majesty was also pleased to write a letter in his behalf to King James II., a naval monarch, well able to appreciate the captain's daring; and so it proved, for the English king, upon the captain's return, gave him a ship, which was his introduction to the Royal navy.* There he speedily won high dis *This story of the Moors' heads derives considerable countenance from the following circumstance related in Owen and Blakeway's "History of Shrewsbury." It appears that a Mr. Richard Ridley married Elizabeth Benbow, a sister of the admiral. Their daughter, tinction, but as his career is matter of history, I pass over his several daring cruises, his effective convoys, his bombardment of St. Maloes, his fire-ships, and his bold attack on Calais, where he was wounded, and his other numerous acts of gallantry. He became an admiral in 1694, and in 1700 King William III., it is said, to mark his approbation, granted him an honourable augmentation to his arms, "by adding to the three bent bows which he and his family already bore as many arrows."* On the approach of the war of the Succession, King William wanted a commander for his West India Sarah Ridley, married Richard Briscoe, and Helen Briscoe, great granddaughter of this marriage, married John Powell, of the Castle Foregate, Shrewsbury; and in his possession might be seen a curious kind of cup or punch-bowl edged with silver, on which was engraved The First Adventure of Captain John Benbo, and Gift to Richard Ridley, 1687." On close inspection this cup was found to consist of cane very closely matted together, and coated on both sides with varnish. The vessel was evidently such a covering for the head as is in use among the Moors, so that it might have been worn by one of the thirteen pirates who boarded the Benbow frigate. * My friend, Albert W. Woods, Esq., Lancaster Herald, informs me that no registry or entry of these augmented arms is to be found in the Heralds' College. The only Benbow arms there are those of the Benbows of Newport, viz., "Sa. two string-bows endorsed in pale or garnished gu., between two bundles of arrows in fesse, three in each bundle, gold, barbed and headed arg., and tied up proper. Crest-A harpy close, or, face proper, wreathed round the head with a chaplet of roses gu." Mr. Woods also kindly furnishes me with a pedigree of the Benbows of Newport from Vincent's "Collection for the County of Salop," which nowhere shows connection with the family of the admiral, but in it I find a "Thomas Benbow, ætatis 20, 1623." May not this have been (though no uncle of the admiral) the Colonel Thomas Benbow of the Civil War, who, as nothing proves that he was shot after the Battle of Worcester, may have lived to be the old cavalier whom Charles II. discovered in poverty in the Tower? fleet, but hesitated summoning Benbow, as he had already worked him so hard. Some other officers sent for seemed not to like undertaking the heavy duty proposed, upon which the king is reported to have said, "I will not have these beaux, but must get a beau of another sort, honest Benbow." The admiral accordingly arrived, and when the king excused himself for exacting what he thought too much, Benbow said, "he knew no difference of climates, and, for his part, he thought no officer had a right to choose his station, that he himself should be, at all times, ready to go to any part of the world to which his majesty thought proper to send him." Benbow sailed with the fleet to the West Indies; he there did all he could to carry out the object of his government to force the Spanish colonies not to recognise Philip V., Louis XIV.'s grandson, as king of Spain; and the moment he received official information of war being declared, May, 4, 1702, against France, he prepared, with his usual daring, to attack with a far inferior force the squadron under the command of the French admiral, Du Casse. This brought on the affair, which redounded so to his own honour and to the disgrace of the captains under him. Mr. C. J. Yonge, in his recent able "History of the British Navy," to which I shall have to refer more than once in this volume, gives the following clear and spirited account of the memorable engagement: "In the autum of 1701 Benbow had been sent to the Antilles, where it was known that the French admiral, Du Casse, was also cruising. Benbow was a resolute and skilful officer, but a man of a somewhat rough and stern temper, which had excited a feeling of insubordination and hostility against him in the breasts of some of his officers. Though peace still subsisted when he quitted England, his instructions were warlike; and he had acted on them, making prizes of several Spanish ships, and in no respect keeping secret his intention to treat the French in the same manner, if opportunity should offer. In the spring of 1702 certain information reached him that the French were preparing greatly to increase their force in the neighbourhood; and at the beginning of August he learnt that Du Casse, with four ships of the line, and one large frigate, were off Carthagena, making arrangements with the Spaniards to cripple our trade in that quarter. His own force consisted of two ships of the line, one ship of fifty-four guns, and four large frigates.* With these he at once sailed in quest of the Frenchman; and, on the 19th of August, he found him proceeding under easy sail at no great distance from the South American shore. Benbow at once made the signal for battle, but, as the French squadron, though not positively fleeing from the combat, held on its course, without taking any measures to bring it on; little was done that evening, * The following is the exact list of Benbow's naval force :- The Pendennis, Captain Thomas Hudson 39 |