On the 12th July, when the “Speedy” Packet had completed her complement of men, had taken her mails on board, and was about to slip her moorings, a number of her crew refused to join the vessel, and, headed by the gunner, went to the agent’s office and demanded their discharge. Being asked for their reasons, they had nothing better to say than that they did not like the voyage, and that if they were to go upon it they must have more pay. The agent, willing to concede whatever was possible, paid them a month’s wages in advance, whereupon they became more riotous and intractable than before. Seeing that they were quickly passing out of his control, being in fact in a state of excitement which made them for the time quite inaccessible to reason, the agent sent a message to the captain of the Guardship; and in an hour two strong parties were scouring every alley and public-house in the town in search of the malingering seamen of the “Speedy,” but could find no trace of them. Nor was this surprising, for the deserters were all Falmouth men, and the old town contained hiding-places which more careful searchers than the press-gangs might have failed to discover. Meanwhile, Captain Sutherland, who commanded the “Speedy,” had engaged other men at unusually high rates of pay, to take the place of the missing ones. But these new men were resolved not to fall short of the high example set before their eyes, and they too decamped as soon as they had secured a payment in advance. It was impossible to allow the mails to suffer delay from conduct such as this, and in order to demonstrate that the Service could go on very well without the Falmouth sailors, the “Speedy” was sent round to Plymouth, where she completed her crew without difficulty. This reminder of the ease with which the prosperity of Falmouth, dependent as it was chiefly on the Packets, could be destroyed by their removal, had a very sobering effect. The sense of insecurity which outbreaks of this kind created in the minds of the authorities was, however, a grave misfortune for Falmouth, contributing, as it doubtless did, to the formation of the scheme which a few years later placed the Service under Admiralty control, and ultimately removed it from Falmouth altogether. It is scarcely possible within the limits of a work such as this to describe all the gallant fights of the Falmouth vessels in the period under consideration. The conditions of naval warfare in those days were simple, the incidents of one sea fight resembled another, and the recital of them is apt to become wearisome, unless kept within narrow limits. There is one fortunate little action which may, however, be described before the subject is closed; a fight which is less remarkable for the desperate or bloody character of the fighting than for the breezy confidence with which the Falmouth commander took his ship into action, and the skill or good luck which brought him through it with absolute success.