Bristol at Spithead 23d February 1777.
Sir,
Please to acquaint Their Lordship I am just arrived here in His Majesty's Ship Bristol under my Command from New York after a passage of Six weeks and four days, Lieutenant Robertson of the Bristol who is charged with Lord Howe's Dispatches will deliver you this.2 Inclosed waits on you the State and Condition of the Ship. I am with respect Sir [&c.]
J Raynor
1. PRO, Admiralty 1/2390.
2. Lord Sandwich sent Howe's dispatches to the King with the notation that they "contain nothing of particular importance." Sir John Fortescue, ed., The Correspondence of King George the Third from 1760 to December 1783 (London, 1928), III, 420. Hereafter cited as Fortescue, ed., Correspondence of George Ill.
