TERRA AUSTRALIS, 
495 
In England. ] 
of the greatest hardships to officers of a state of warfare was at the 
same time applied to me in England, and continued throughout this 
protracted detention. So soon as it was known that I had been re- 
leased, and was arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, a commission for 
post rank was issued; and on my representations to the Right Hon. 
Charles Yorke, first lord commissioner of the Admiralty, by whom 
I had the honour to be received with the condescension and feeling 
natural to his character, he was pleased to direct that it should 
take date as near to that of general De Caen’s permission to quit 
Mauritius, as the patent which constituted the existing Board of 
Admiralty would allow. A more retrospective date could be given 
to it only by an order of the King in council ; unhappily His Majesty 
was then incapable of exercising his royal functions ; and when the 
Regency was established, my proposed petition did not meet with 
that official encouragement which was necessary to obtain success. 
It was candidly acknowledged, that my services in the Investigator 
would have been deemed a sufficient title to advancement in 1804, 
had I then arrived in England and the Admiralty been composed of 
the same members ; but no representation could overcome the re- 
luctance to admitting an exception to the established rule; thus the 
injustice of the French governor of Mauritius, besides all its other 
consequences, was attended with the loss of six years post rank in 
His Majesty's naval service. 
One of my first cares was to seek the means of relieving some 
relations of my Mauritius friends, prisoners of war in England ; and 
in a few months, through the indulgence of the Admiralty and of the 
earl of Liverpool, secretary of state for the colonies, I had the grati- 
fication of sending five young men back to the island, to families 
who had shown kindness to English prisoners. 
The Board of Admiralty was pleased to countenance the pub- 
lication of the Investigator’s voyage by providing for the charts and 
embellishments ; and a strong representation was made by its direc- 
tions to the French government, upon the subjects of my detained 
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