"Since I began my letter an express is arrived from Bastia with the news that, after the dispersion of the French fleet, five sail of the line fell into the hands of the Spanish fleet, which was coming from Carthagena to our assistance. This news is generally supposed to be authentic, which I hope may be the case. I forgot to mention to you before that the _Berwick_, a 74 of ours, who, I think I told you in my last, had rolled her masts overboard in a gale of wind, was going from St Fiorenzo to Leghorn to be repaired, when, unfortunately, she fell in with the French fleet off Cape Corso, and was taken. She, notwithstanding, made a very gallant action, in which her captain was killed. Our fleet is now in Porto Spezia, not far, I believe, from Genoa." The details of the fight described above are substantially correct, though the engagement was carried on for two days, and the bulk of the fighting was done by the _Agamemnon_ (Captain Nelson). Undoubtedly, by this action Admiral Hotham saved Corsica for the time being, but his victory was not as complete as it might have been, or would have been, if Nelson had been in command of the fleet. The latter recognised the necessity for staking everything on the destruction of the French fleet there and then, and endeavoured in vain to persuade the Admiral to pursue and prevent the enemy from reaching Toulon. Hotham's contentment at the result of the engagement bore fatal fruit, for the French ships which escaped to Toulon soon refitted, and having been joined on the 4th April by some ten others from Brest, formed a very powerful fleet, and became a serious menace to the small British garrison of Corsica, at the best of times not strong enough to resist invasion, and now much reduced by sickness. About this time the 51st lost another officer, and Rice inveighs against the climate again:-- "I am sorry to tell you," he writes, "that we have had the misfortune to lose Captain Alcock[27] of our regiment, who departed this life, like poor Tourle, a martyr to the complaint of this cursed climate. He had been but a short time ill at Bastia, from whence he went to Leghorn for the recovery of his health, but on his first landing was seized with a violent fever, which carried him off in the course of a few days, in spite of the faculty. You may recollect my mentioning both him and his brother--the latter who was so civil to me on coming from England, and the former on my joining the regiment. Thus (in Alcock and Tourle) we have lost two of the worthiest, gentlemanlike, and handsomest men that ever any regiment possessed--the one captain of grenadiers, the other of light infantry. They were both great friends of Colonel Moore's, and, in short, of all the officers.