order to make you some amends for your disappointment. I have no objection to your making any use you please of this letter, if you think that my testimony to the above circumstances can be of any service to you.”
In April 1802, an extensive promotion took place, but the subject of this memoir was not included. He consequently made another appeal to Earl Spencer, and received the following answer:–
“Sir, – I am concerned to find you have not been included in the late naval promotion, and beg you will not suppose that any thing in your former letters has given me the least offence, or caused any other impression than that of regret. I was so circumstanced as not to have it in my power to be of use to you on the occasion.
On application to the Earl of St. Vincent, he was, Mar. 12th, 1803, appointed regulating captain of the impress service at Poole, with permission to select his own lieutenants. Soon after his arrival there, he had occasion to counteract >various attempts to bring that ever unpopular service (which had been in a manner forced upon him) into still greater disrepute. In the month of May following, he received a letter from the Earl’s private secretary, acquainting him that the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty were well satisfied with his conduct, “and that it would not fail to operate in his favor.” He also received the following letter from one of the members for Poole, whose son he had obliged to apologize for some intemperate conduct:–
“Sir,– In addition to many reasons you have before given me to approve the equally liberal and spirited manner in which you have exerted yourself to discharge the painful duties of the impress service at Poole, I beg leave to add my acknowledgments for your recent conduct towards the crew of the ship Industry. I do not wish to weaken those sentiments in your opinion, and I assure you they have not been lessened in mine by any extraneous circumstances which arose relative to that ship, and which, although matter of regret, can never be to you or me subject of reproach. But if any thing relative thereto, which in the slightest or most remote degree implicates the character of my son, has been mentioned to the Admiralty, if it be not making an improper request, I beg the favor of a correct copy thereof; and with respectful compliments to Mrs. O’Neill, I have the honor to remain, &c.
