their ship. The Spaniards took Hermione into service under the name Santa Cecilia; her crew included 25 of her former crew, who remained under Spanish guard. Only one of the small detachment of marines on board participated in the mutiny. While the half-dozen remaining were too outnumbered and taken by surprise to fulfill their role of shipboard police and oppose the mutineers, they remained under the leadership of a sergeant and insisted on being treated as prisoners of war by the Spanish authorities. The marines were accordingly exchanged six months later, along with the surviving warrant officers. later captured some of the mutineers on a French privateer, Petite Magicienne. Recapture and renaming Meanwhile, news of the fate of HMS Hermione reached Admiral Sir Hyde Parker when HMS Diligence captured a Spanish schooner. Parker wrote to the governor of La Guaira, demanding the return of the ship and the surrender of the mutineers. Meanwhile, he despatched under Captain Henry Ricketts to commence negotiations. Parker also set up a system of informers and posted rewards that eventually led to the capture of 33 of the mutineers, some of whom were tried aboard , and at least one aboard . Of these, 24 were hanged and gibbetted, one was transported, and eight were acquitted or pardoned. To Parker's fury, Admiral Richard Rodney Bligh had issued pardons to several crew members. These included Pigot's elderly servant and the servant's twelve-year-old son, who Bligh concluded could not reasonably have been expected to resist armed mutineers. Acting against regulations, Parker forced Bligh to resign his command and return to Britain in the summer of 1799. Santa Cecilia, under the command of Captain Don Ramon de Chalas, had meanwhile sat in Puerto Cabello until Captain Edward Hamilton, aboard , cut her out of the harbour on 25 October 1799. Hamilton led a boarding party to retake Hermione and, after an exceptionally bloody action, sailed her out of danger under Spanish gunfire. The Spanish casualties included 119 dead; the British took 231 Spaniards prisoner, while another fifteen jumped or fell overboard. Hamilton had eleven men injured, four seriously, but none killed. Hamilton himself was severely wounded. For his daring exploit, Hamilton was made a knight by letters patent, a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (2 January 1815), and eventually became a baronet (20 October 1818). The Jamaica House of Assembly awarded him a sword worth