ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the letters of Hanmer Warrington to R. W, Hay, the Baron Rousseau, Lord Lansdownec, Sir James Scarlett. Gordon Laing's fate having been determined, the need was to discover what had become of his journals, a need which the return of Rene Caillie to Toulon in October 1828 made compelling. As far back as May 1826, when he was recuperating under El Muktar's care, Laing had said he intended sending his dispatches back to Tripoli from Timbuktu. Convinced that Laing's journals had reached Tripoli, and that it needed only greater pressure to induce the Bashaw to produce them, Hanmer Warrington struck his Consular flag and refused to communicate further with the Castle. By the time Warrington had apparently reached the conclusion —as usual, without any apparent justification — that both Laing's death and the theft of his journals had been plotted in Tripoli, and the possibility of the Bashaw's implication still lay at the back of his thoughts.
