A forgotten naval battle
K. G. Tregonning’s short note recovers the account of a naval engagement fought in the Macassar Strait on 26 July 1806, discovered in an early issue of the Prince of Wales Island Gazette and absent from standard naval histories such as Parkinson’s War in the Eastern Seas (p. 202).
The action involved H.M.S. Greyhound (Captain Elphinstone) and H.M.S. Harrier (Captain Troubridge), part of Admiral Sir Thomas Troubridge’s fleet based at Penang, which encountered a Dutch squadron of four vessels. Employing a raking tactic that Tregonning notes as a “Nelsonian touch,” the two British ships subjected the leading Dutch frigate to fire from both sides, resulting in the capture of the frigate Pallas (36 guns), the armed ship Victoria (18 guns), and the Batavia (10 guns), while the corvette William escaped (p. 203). British losses were minimal: one seaman killed and six wounded. The captured Pallas was commissioned as H.M.S. Macassar under Captain Troubridge, the admiral’s son (p. 203). Tregonning closes by noting that the despatches left Penang on the Blenheim, which foundered off Madagascar, likely consigning the prize-money and official reports to obscurity (p. 204).