on board the Blenheim 98, Captain (afterwards Lord) Duncan; which ship formed part of Earl Howe’s fleet at the relief of Gibraltar, and was his Lordship’s second in the subsequent action off Cape Spartel[1]: her loss on the latter occasion consisted of 2 men killed and 3 wounded.
On the return of peace, Mr. Evans joined the Trusty 50, fitting for the flag of Sir John Lindsay, Bart.; and during the winter of 1783, we find him in the Orestes sloop, Captain James Ellis, employed on Channel service.
After assisting at the capture of several large and powerfully armed smuggling vessels, one of which defended herself until several men were killed and wounded on both sides, Mr. Evans proceeded to Newfoundland, as a passenger on board the Merlin sloop, and from thence, in the Thisbe frigate, to Halifax, where he joined the Assistance 50, flag-ship of Sir Charles Douglas, then commanding on the American station.
In 1786, Mr. Evans returned home, and was removed into the Astraea frigate. Captain Peter Rainier, with whom he proceeded to Ferrol, Madeira, and the West Indies, where he remained for a period of three years, during which the Astraea visited all the British islands, and most of the French and Spanish colonies.
Whilst off St. Domingo, our young officer appears to have had a very narrow escape, a boat in which he was going to Isabella Bay, having upset in a squall, and remained bottom upwards for more than three hours before she was discovered, and then only by accident. On this occasion, Mr. Evans saved the lives of two men who could not swim, by giving each of them an oar, after they had let go their hold of the boat, in consequence of the alarm excited by another midshipman speaking about sharks, several of which monsters were in fact seen immediately after the launch of the frigate had arrived to their assistance.
In 1789, having then completed his time as a midshipman, Mr. Evans returned to England, in charge of a large and valuable merchant ship, which had lost both her master and
