My Lord — I have been honoured with your Lordship's letter of yester day from Hampton Court, for which I feel myself much obliged. Your Lordship's time is of too much consequence to be taken up in corresponding with me, but I must beg leave once more humbly to represent to your consideration the grounds upon which I have, in the name of the merchants, formerly applied and did lately apply to have a ship of force stationed some where in the River Clyde, because I am afraid I have not been sufficiently understood.
In the first place, it was wished that a frigate might have been so stationed because she would at all ,times have been ready to cruise between the Mulls of Cantire and Galloway, and by that means have given protection to Ayr, Irvine, Rothesay, Greenock, and Port Glasgow, as well as to the north of Ireland.
In the next place, this protection was wished for the more because, the trade of this part of the world having been almost entirely carried on with America only, the merchants had reason to believe this coast would be the first object of the resentment of their privateers — the more so as the Americans knew well that the inhabitants upon these coasts were without forts or arms to protect them, and that their warehouses were full of tobacco, become of late very valuable and all they had to make up for the losses sustained by the American rebellion. Through me, your Lordship knows these fears were represented at the end of last year. They might then appear hastily and improperly taken up, that is not the case now.
Lastly, it was thought that a ship so stationed might have obtained as many good sailors here as perhaps at any other station about Great Britain, probably more.
The inhabitants upon these coasts are mostly sailors, one half of them idle from the stop put to the American trade, the remainder employed in the herring fishery, most of whom might have been obtained to man his Majesty's fleet — the herring busses being now numerous, their rendezvous fixed to this coast, and their return to Greenock and Port Glasgow certain to entitle them to the bounty. In the meantime the merchants of Glasgow and Greenock have and do now, by a large and effectual bounty, give all the assistance in their power towards manning his Majesty's fleet, from which they must chiefly look for protection.
Your Lordship is pleased to say that a ship of 32 guns is ordered to remain stationed on the north—west part of this island, and that a ship of 64 guns and a sloop of 18 are ordered to cruise up St George's Channel and to the north of Ireland to clear those seas of privateers. This may perhaps for a short time be effectual; but from the manner which privateers have come out of and returned to French ports, I must again humbly submit to your Lordship's better judgment whether the peculiar circumstances of the west coast of Scotland does not call for the permanent protection of a ship of force at a fixed station somewhere in the River Clyde, from whence she may cruise as occasion requires. I am [&c.],
P.S. — Till within these very few years, I never remember the Clyde without a man of war or a frigate merely to regulate the cutters and to assist in preventing the business of smuggling.
