'C. YORKE.'

* * * * *

The British fleet with its allied Dutch squadron arrived off Algiers on
August 21. Lord Exmouth had sent in advance a corvette with orders to
endeavour to rescue the British Consul, a humane effort which, however,
succeeded only in rescuing that gentleman's wife and child, and
resulted, on the other hand, in the capture of the boat's crew of
eighteen men. The captain of the corvette reported that the Dey refused
altogether to give up that official, or to be responsible for his
safety, and also that there were 40,000 troops in the town, in addition
to the Janissaries who had been summoned from distant garrisons. The
Algerine fleet, he said, consisted of between forty and fifty gun and
mortar vessels, as well as a numerous flotilla of galleys. Works had
been thrown up on the mole which protected the harbour, and the forts
were known to be armed with a numerous artillery and to be of excellent
masonry with walls fourteen to sixteen feet thick. The Dey, thinking
himself fairly secure behind such defences, was prepared with a
determined resistance.

On August 27, Lord Exmouth sent a flag of truce restating his demands
and giving a period of three hours for a reply. Upon the expiration of
that term and on the return of the flag of truce without an answer, he
anchored his flagship just half a cable's length from the mole head at
the entrance of the harbour, so that her starboard broadside flanked all
the batteries from the mole-head to the lighthouse. The mole itself was
covered with troops and spectators, whom Lord Exmouth vainly tried to
disperse before the firing began by waving his hat and shouting from his
own quarter-deck as the flagship came to an anchor at half-past two in