Mount Edgcumbe, 15 August 1778.1
. . . We have a party of marines ready for the Suffolk.2 If she and the two ships from Portsmouth arrive it will be a great reinforcement;3 but my original thirty I should hope will do the business,4 if the French will let us place our ships as near as I would allow them without firing. The Defence will be ready in ten days, wanting two hundred seamen; she appears to be a fine ship.5 I have several applications from the English in Mill Prison; many Americans would be glad to come, but won’t ask for fear of refusal. If we can’t avail ourselves of these people in this time of want, it is our own fault. I am sure if it remained with me a day should not pass before I had the whole number distributed in the fleet.
Sandwich Papers 2: 151–52.
1. Mount Edgcumbe in Cornwall forms the western boundary of Plymouth Harbor.
2. H.M.S. Suffolk, Capt. Adam Duncan, commanding.
3. The two ships were H.M.S. Valiant, Capt. the Hon. John Leveson Gower, commanding, and H.M.S. Bienfaisant, Capt. John McBride, commanding.
4. Keppel commanded the Western Squadron, also known as the Channel fleet.
5. H.M.S. Defence, Capt. Samuel Granston Goodall, commanding.
