Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. — a MemoirBiddulph, Elizabeth Philippa, Baroness
History
Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. — a Memoir
Biddulph, Elizabeth Philippa, Baroness
Hardwicke, Charles Philip Yorke, Earl of, 1799-1873
From Salonica Captain Yorke, hearing of another clue, started in search
of the elusive Macri Georgio, whom he thought he had at last located in
the Peneus. So there is another expedition in the boats with sixty men
and a twelve-miles pull to Platamona. At a village, Karitza, they hear
of an atrocity of the pirates, who had burned a boat and killed all the
crew, leaving one poor fellow only, dead on the beach with his right
arm missing, as witness to the outrage. So the little force bivouacs on
the beach, and at 4.30 next morning chase and fire on some men whom
they see hauling a boat over a sandbank into the river Peneus, with
others retreating into the forest. There followed another chase up the
river with the lighter boats, which after rowing up stream as far as
they would float found only the small boat seen the day before,
abandoned and with no one in sight. In these expeditions the name of
Lieutenant Hart is frequently mentioned by my father. When in later
years Captain Yorke succeeded to the earldom of Hardwicke, he
remembered this gentleman, found him a place as agent of his estates,
and had in him a second right-hand for many years at Wimpole.
On October 30, 1830, Captain Yorke had taken the _Alligator_ to
Karabusa, and as from that point onward his journal is of great
interest, I print it in his own words. It shows, I think, the qualities
of firmness and energy which have appeared so fully in all that he did,
as well as diplomatic talents of a high order in circumstances of some
difficulty. His orders were to take over Karabusa from the insurgents
and hold it pending the settlement. There is a gap in the journal of
some six months at the end of the year 1830, and on the 2nd of June
1831 he records leaving the _Alligator_ for England. In nothing that he
wrote does his love of the sea and of his profession appear so
convincingly as in the touching words in which he records leaving his
crew and his ship. These require no comment, and I set them out as he
left them, together with some reflections on the home voyage which help
to display his character, and some remarks upon the steamer in which he
reached England, which have a peculiar interest in showing the
difficulties of the early days of steam navigation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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