One naval worthy who was in command at Falmouth in these troublous times, when, to tell the truth, England was but ill-prepared to conduct the naval and military campaign into which she had entered, was Sir Edward Fellow, who came of an old Cornish family, and after having done “some very worthy deeds and gallant things in the American War,” on the outbreak of the war brought about by the French Revolution, offered his services to the naval authorities, and was appointed to a fine frigate called the _Nymphe_. On his first cruise, when he had filled up his complement with Cornish miners! “owing to the lack of proper seamen,” and had finally taken on board as leaven a few prime seamen at Falmouth, he fell in with the _Cleopatra_, a revolutionary frigate in the mouth of the Channel, and after an astonishingly fierce engagement with the Frenchman (who had nailed the _bonnet rouge_ to his mast head) succeeded in capturing her and bringing her in as a prize. As a writer of the period says, “those were stirring days and restless anxious nights along the coast. But into our havens and ports came many prizes to British seamen’s gallantry, and prize money literally ran in the streets as it burned holes in the sailors’ pockets.... Whilst the officers, though perhaps a trifle more provident, yet denied themselves little of enjoyment so long as the money lasted. But they were gallant lads, one and all, who made Falmouth thus merry by day and night. And when the ‘rhino’ was spent sailed away with light and stout hearts in search of more glory and prizes.” At the commencement of the nineteenth century, when the war was ended by the Treaty of Paris, Falmouth had grown a port of size and note, and it might have been expected that its position would have been maintained, if not improved upon. Vessels of all nations and from almost every quarter of the world made it their port of call, discharged their cargoes there, or refitted. But for some reason or other, in the third and fourth decades of the century, a marked decline manifested itself, and Falmouth of to-day is of less importance than it was a hundred years ago.