‘A splinter from our ship was forced, Which took my arm, to my sad loss, And now I’m found to wander up and down, Seeking relief where it can be found. We all are seamen to our right, And on the seas we took delight, But by hard fortune you plainly see We lost our limbs on the raging sea. All you who extend your charity, The Lord preserve your family.’ (_The Seaflower._) The last action of importance before the peace of Amiens was that between Linois and Sir James Saumarez in the Straits of Gibraltar on July 12, 1801 (Clowes, iv. 466). The ballad on it is a parody of the despatch in which Linois is said to have represented his escape as a victory (p. 298). One feature in this war was the attempted invasion of Ireland by the French. A fleet appeared in Bantry Bay under Admiral Morard de Galle in December 1796; a landing was actually effected at Killala on August 22, 1798, by General Humbert; a squadron under Commodore Bompart was engaged by Sir John Borlase Warren on October 12, 1798. A number of ballads relating to these incidents are collected in Crofton Croker’s _Popular Songs Illustrative of French Invasions of Ireland_, parts iii., iv., published by the Percy Society in 1847, but they are too entirely political in their character. The best is one beginning: ‘Now fair and strong the south-east blew, and high the billows rose, The French fleet bounded o’er the main freighted with Erin’s foes. Oh, where was Hood and where was Howe, and where Cornwallis then, Where Colpoys, Bridport, or Pellew, and all their gallant men?’ The question asked in these lines formed the basis of a motion made subsequently in Parliament. The author of the ballad answers: ‘Nor skill nor courage aught avail against heaven’s high decrees: The storm arose and closed our ports, a mist o’erspread the seas.’ Captain Mahan, however, points out that the inefficiency of the British dispositions against invasion was to blame (_Influence of Sea-power upon the French Revolution and Empire_, i. 360). The fleet which reached Bantry escaped with impunity excepting the Droits de l’Homme, seventy-four, which fell in with Sir Edward Pellew, in the Indefatigable, forty-four, and Captain Reynolds in the Amazon, thirty-six, was badly mauled, and wrecked with all her crew on the coast of France. This engagement, which took place on January 13, 1798, is celebrated in _The Amazon Frigate_ (p. 276). An earlier exploit of Pellew’s, the capture of the Cleopâtre on June 18, 1793, is also the subject of a ballad (p. 267). The fight between the Pique and the Blanche on June 4, 1795, and that between the Mars and the Hercule, on April 21, 1798, and an action fought by the sloop Arrow in September 1799, are commemorated in the same way (pp. 285, 289).