



Produced by David Widger





"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 had been removed to make room
for 