50 WEYMOUTH AND THE WAR, 1802-3. 



any attempt to press them to serve on board his fine frigate. 

 The information proved correct. The hornets' nest was soon 

 astir and humming. For the press gangs sent on shore were 

 waited for, and attacked, and driven off Weymouth Quay into 

 their boats in confusion. Captain Wolfe now feels he must 

 make a strong and decided effort. At four in the afternoon of 

 April 1st, 1803, let us note the significant date he lands on 

 the beach foreshore where the stone breakwater pier was 

 afterward built. Scarcely had he landed when a crowd of 

 seamen of the port fires upon his party. The fierce fight that 

 ensued may be imagined ! At first the navymeri are succesful. 

 Two prisoners are made, whose names are Porter and Way, 

 the one armed with a poker, the other with a reaping-hook. 

 The crowd runs off to take safety in Portland with their friends 

 whose assistance they were expecting. And sure enough a 

 very formidable mob of nearly 300 men from Portland arrives. 

 They are armed with muskets, pistols and cutlasses, spoils 

 from the wreck of a number of transports that had been 

 driven ashore in the heavy gales some seven years before in 

 Portland Road. The unfortunate fifty from the Aigle were 

 attacked with fury, 16 or 17 being seriously wounded, nine of 

 these having afterwards to be discharged from the service in 

 consequence of the severe injuries received. Captain Wolfe 

 himself seems to have been brutally knocked about, and would 

 have nearly lost his life, had it not been for one of his seamen, 

 a quartermaster named John Manning, whose cutlass was 

 broken in parrying a blow at the Captain's head. This 

 unfortunate officer seems to have refrained from serious 

 retaliation as long as he possibly could. But at last, in 

 consideration for the safety of his party, he gives the marines 

 the order to fire. Four of the mob were killed, the rest 

 bolting in such panic, "with such precipitation," the story says, 

 "that only three could be secured." It must have been a very 

 battered party that took themselves and their wounded back 

 to the frigate. The Captain was clearly apprehensive of 

 serious trouble, for his first act was to send one of his lieutenants 

 in haste to post up and make report of the happening to the 



