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Gallant, Good Riou", and Jack Renton, by Louis Becke
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Title: "The Gallant, Good Riou", and Jack Renton 1901
Author: Louis Becke
Release Date: April 19, 2008 [EBook #25106]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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"THE GALLANT, GOOD RIOU", and JACK RENTON
From "The Tapu Of Banderah and Other Stories"
By Louis Becke
C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.
1901
"THE GALLANT, GOOD RIOU"
This is a true story of one of Nelson's captains, he of whom Nelson wrote as "the gallant and good Riou"--high meed of praise gloriously won at Copenhagen--but Riou, eleven years before that day, performed a deed, now almost forgotten, which, for unselfish heroism, ranks among the brightest in our brilliant naval annals, and in the sea story of Australia in particular.
In September, 1789, the Guardian, a forty-gun ship, under the command of Riou, then a lieutenant, left England for the one-year-old penal settlement in New South Wales. The little colony was in sore need of food--almost starving, in fact--and Riou's orders were to make all haste to his destination, calling at the Cape on the way to embark live stock and other supplies. All the ship's guns h