When this transformation had been completed, the _Mornington_ took up her position to cruise about the track where the French ship was likely to be hovering, and before long the look-out aloft espied the privateer. The _Mornington_ then continued her game of bluff and altered her course as if she was anxious to get away from the Frenchman. The latter, unsuspecting, began to work up towards the English ship, and by sunset was getting quite near. After darkness had fallen the _Mornington_ ran under easy sail, and presently the Frenchman hailed, asking the ship’s name, ordering them to heave-to. Too late the privateer discovered that he had been ensnared and fired into the _Mornington_, mortally wounding a seaman and injuring the running gear. Captain Frost now determined to injure the enemy’s rigging and sails aloft, and thus cripple him to such an extent that _L’Eugénie_ would not be able to get the windward berth. So chasing him he blazed away at the Frenchman. It was an exciting chase and lasted for three hours. So anxious was the privateer to escape that she threw overboard guns and boats and spars as she went: but at the end of this time the _Mornington_ had come up alongside and the Frenchman’s captain hailed and begged the Englishman to cease firing as they had surrendered. Very shortly the privateer became an English prize, though she was found to be so crippled that she could not beat to windward. But it was a great relief when the news reached India that this mosquito craft had been taken away from any further possibility of preying on the peaceful merchant ships; and by the irony of events she who had formerly spent her time in attacking these trading craft was now to become their protector, for the Government added her to the service and the command was given to the senior lieutenant of the _Mornington_.
The Bombay dockyard by the end of the second decade of the nineteenth century was building such big warships as a ‘74 and ‘84 gun line-of-battle ship, the latter being of 2289 tons. Other big warships were also being constructed, and even those most conservative of sailormen who had always believed exclusively in oak were able after trial to concede that better ships than these Indian teak craft could not be desired. And the men and officers were like their ships. Continuously they seemed to be subject to service, and always they came through it well. French and Dutch, pirates of the Indian Ocean or the Persian Gulf, privateers of France, England or America, it was much the same; the Bombay Marine had to do its work, being hurried here and there to fight and conquer. And when the short intervals of respite occurred these hard-worked people took up again their surveying duties between those distant regions of the Cape of Good Hope and the Sea of Japan and northwards to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. At the close of the Burmese War the officers and men of the Bombay Marine received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament, for no fewer than five of the Company’s cruisers had served throughout the campaign.