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 th…
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