Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/394

(8th Dec.) declared that the Loyal Associations would be embodied "to guard against the first effects of any unexpected attack from the enemy." The Irish insurrection in March 1804 found the community better prepared than it might have been if not thus aroused to a sense of duty. News arrived fitfully; but prizes were occasionally taken to Port Jackson to be condemned.

In May 1803, when H.M.S. Glatton sailed for England, the Governor wrote that a small trading vessel owned at Madras had recently arrived from South America. Sailing southwards from Coquimbo the captain was "chased by an armed vessel which took his boat and thirteen men." Recent captures on the South American coast were enumerated, and the force of the enemy—"two frigates, a ship of fifty guns (that sails very ill, built in Peru), two armed whalers, a cutter brig, and a lugger. I have judged it proper to state this circumstance to possess your Lordship of the hazard that any commercial enterprise on that coast is attended with."

War tidings stirred the remote sons of England like the booming of distant guns. In Nov. 1804 the sound came to their doors. The look-out officer at the South Head signalled for an officer from head-quarters. Lieut. Houstoun was despatched from Sydney. Two ships were in sight. Drums beat to arms. The New South Wales Corps and the Loyal Association were assembled (Sydney Gazette) to "welcome the strangers." At eleven o'clock in the morning a trooper spurred in haste to Government House. A battle was fought outside the heads. The English whaler Policy (carrying letters of marque), with six twelve-pounders, chased by a Dutch vessel, the Swift, with six eighteen-pounders, made ready for action, bore down upon the Swift, was at close quarters at half-past eleven, and in two hours compelled the Dutchmen to strike their colours. Twenty thousand Spanish dollars were on board the prize, which was duly condemned and sold in Sydney.

As traffic in the Pacific increased, the temptations of a dissolute life began to attract numbers of Europeans, "among whom" (the Governor wrote 30th April 1805) "are some of indifferent not to say bad characters, mostly left by ships going to the north-west of America, whalers, and