'History of the Indian Navy. (1613-1863).' [‎267] (286/622)

HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY.
2G7
must have killed a great number of the enemy, but had no
means of computing the number."*
About the 20th of January some of the 6 Ferooz's' boats,
under Acting-Master Price, captured and destroyed a stockade
some ten or twelve miles up the Beeling creek, in the Sal ween
River. Commodore Lynch, not knowing of this attack, pro
ceeded up the river to destroy the stockade, in the 4 Medusa,'
which had shortly before arrived from Prome, but found that
the w 7 ork had been satisfactorily completed. The commodore
then retuned to Moulmein, where the 'Ferooz' lay, and the
'Medusa' proceeded up the Salween to protect the commis
sariat boats bringing provisions to Beeling. The 4 Proserpine '
at this time attempted to make her w-ay up the Sittang, but was
obliged to return owing to the i; bore." On the 12th of
February, as the British column was marching to Tonghoo,
General Steel met at Shoe-gyne, Lieutenant Hellard, First-
Lieutenant of the 4 Ferooz,' who, with the energy and enter
prise for which he was distinguished, had forced his way up the
Sittarig,t from Martaban, with three boats of the 4 Ferooz,'
escorting seven native boats laden with provisions for the force.
Lieutenant Hellard had experienced great difficulty in entering
the river, owing to the numerous and extensive sand-banks,
the channels between which had never been properly surveyed,
and also from the 46 bore," which, on one occasion, was about
six feet high, and might have swamped his boats had they not
been hauled up in a small creek. On leaving Shoe-gyne,
General Steel resolved to take half of the twenty day's pro-
* Commodore Lambert wrote to Grovernment expressing his warm approval of
Lieutenant Holt's gallantry, which elicited the following letter from Mr. Allen,
Officiating Secretary to the Grovernment of India, to his Excellency the Naval
Commander-in-chief, dated Fort William, the 4th of January, 1853 :—
"I am directed to acknowledge the receipt of your Excellency's despatch of
the 27th ultimo, and in reply to express the satisfaction of the Governor-Greneral
in Council with the conduct of Lieutenant G. T. H olt of the Indian Navy in
having driven a body of the enemy, with much loss to them, from the creeks on
the Martaban shore."
f Colonel H. Yule, the historian of Major Phayre's Mission to Ava in 1855,
says of the Sittang :—
" The course of the Sittang is tortuous throughout the province, but especially
for fifty miles north of the cantonment of Shwegyeen it writhes like a wounded
snake, so that the development of the stream would nearly double the actual
length of the valley. Throughout its course it is shallow and full of shoals, over
which boats of any size have to be dragged laboriously, in passing between
Shwegyeen and Tonghoo in the dry season. The lower part of the river presents
a still greater obstacle to navigation in the remarkable bore, occasioned by the
union of two portions of the tidal wave of the Indian Ocean, which drives up the
narrowing funnels of the estuary with a speed, it is stated, of nearly twelve miles
an hour, and with a crest raised sometimes nine feet above the surface. Native
boats do frequently make the dangerous entry, but it has never been accom
plished by our steamers, though it has been attempted. The important frontier
station of Tonghoo is thus, by the wild nature of the country on the one hand,
and by the wilder water-access on the other, deprived of all easy and effective
communication with Eangoon, the centre of Government, of supply, and of
reinforcement."