“Yesterday arrived the Virginia packet, Gordon, from Virginia for Bourdeaux, with about 70 hogsheads of tobacco,1 prize to the Fortune letter of marque, capt. Fortune, of London.2 This day arrived a schooner, supposed the Viper, a letter of marque from some part of Scotland,3 and taken by a French man of war, and retaken by the Fox frigate.4 This morning admiral Keppel’s fleet arrived from the Bay.”5
London Packet; or, New Lloyd’s Evening Post, 31 July–3 Aug. 1778.
1. Ship Virginia Packet, John Gordon, master, captured on a voyage from Virginia to France. UkLPR, H.C.A. 32/475/15.
2. Fortune, a two-masted vessel of 200 tons, of London, George Fortune, commander, with a crew of 50, and armed with 14 6- and 4-pounders, and 8 swivel guns, received a letter of marque on 30 Oct. 1777. UkLPR, H.C.A. 26/61, Letters of Marque: Declarations Against America, 1777–1783, fol. 111.
3. Viper, a two-masted vessel of 60 tons, of Greenock, Scotland, Thomas Salkeld, commander, with a crew of 30, and armed with 8 4-pounders, received a letter of marque on 12 June 1778. It was on a trading voyage to Gothenburg and Madiera and back to Greenock. UkLPR, H.C.A. 26/62, Letters of Marque: Declarations Against America, 1777–1783, fols. 123–24.
4. H.M. frigate Fox, Capt. Thomas Windsor, commanding.
5. The fleet commanded by Adm. the Hon. Augustus Keppel was returning to Plymouth Sound and Cawsand Bay for repairs after having engaged the French Brest fleet in Quiberon Bay off Ushant.
