There was at the Governor's command a small military force, barely sufficient to maintain discipline in a community in which there were necessarily dangerously turbulent elements;* (* In a report to Governor King, April 1805, Brevet-Major Johnson pointed out that the military were barely sufficient for mounting guard, and urged "the great want of an augmentation to the military forces of this colony" (Historical Records of New South Wales 6 183). Colonel Paterson, in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, 1804, remarked that "it will certainly appear evident that our military force at present is very inadequate" (Ibid 5 454). John Blaxland, in a letter to Lord Liverpool, 1809, wrote that "it is to be feared that if two frigates were to appear, the settlement is not capable of opposing any resistance" (Ibid 7 231). An unsigned memorandum in the Record Office, "bearing internal evidence of having been written by an officer who was in the colony during the Governorship of Hunter," pointed out that "a naval force is absolutely necessary on the coast of New South Wales...to protect the colony from an attack by the French from the Mauritius, which would have taken place long ago if the enemy had possessed a naval force equal to the enterprise" (Ibid 7 248 to 250).) but he was destitute of effective vessels for service afloat. When the navigator Flinders was wrecked in the Porpoise in August 1803--his own exploring ship, the Investigator, being by this time unseaworthy--Governor King had no other craft to give him for his return voyage than the decrepit Cumberland, a mere leaky little barge hardly fit for better uses than ferrying a placid lake. The colony was, in short, simply a kraal for yarding British undesirables and housing their keepers; its remoteness was an advantage for the purpose in view; and it never seemed to strike the officials in England who superintended its affairs, that the adequate defence of a gaol against foreign aggression was an undertaking that called for exertion or forethought. The unreluctant retrocession of the Cape to the Dutch in 1800 indicates that the interest of defending Australia was lost sight of in the midst of what appeared to be more pressing considerations. It has been remarked above that there was a period when the peace of Australia was imperilled. The danger was obviated, certainly not because of the efficiency of the defence, but rather through lack of enterprise on the part of the Admiral in command of the French squadron in the Indian Ocean. It will be well to narrate the circumstances, together with an incident which illustrates in an amusing manner the kind of man this officer was.