The enemy--which was the _Apollon_, 50 guns, fitted out as a privateer--had it all her own way. Passing under the stern of the _Anglesea_, she rounded to on her lee quarter, and delivered a heavy fire. The guns were not cleared away, there was a lot of water below, and in a minute or two sixty men were dead or wounded. The captain and master were killed by the first broadside, and the command of the ship thus devolved upon the second lieutenant, a young and inexperienced officer. He was in a very tight place. The Frenchman being on the lee quarter, he could not bear up and run, as he would have fallen on board the enemy, which carried many more men, and his ship meanwhile was under a heavy fire, which could not be returned, his men falling fast. After consultation with the third lieutenant, he surrendered--and really it is difficult to see what else he could have done. Possibly an older man, of consummate skill and great experience, might have found a way of handling his ship so as, at least, to gain some respite; on the other hand, no such man would have had any business to find himself in this predicament. So the lieutenant--Baker Phillips by name--hauled down his colours, and in due course was tried by court-martial for the loss of his ship. The court "was unanimously of opinion that Captain Elton, deceased, did not give timely directions for getting his ship clear or in a proper posture of defence, nor did he afterwards behave like an officer or a seaman, which was the cause of the ship being left to Lieutenant Phillips in such distress and confusion. And that Lieutenant Baker Phillips, late second lieutenant of the said ship, by not endeavouring to the utmost of his power after Captain Elton's death to put the ship in order of fighting, not encouraging the inferior officers and men to fight courageously, and by yielding to the enemy, falls under part of the tenth Article.[11] They do sentence him to death, to be shot by a platoon of musqueteers on the forecastle; ... but ... having regard to the distress and confusion the ship was in when he came to the command, and being a young man and inexperienced, they beg leave to recommend him to mercy."