I represent Timothy Kelly. I was a lieutenant and commander of HMS Port Royal. The Port Royal was a sloop captured from the French in 1778. It spent 1780 and 1781 patrolling the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. In April 1780 we arrived in Pensacola with HMS Hound and a convoy of supply ships. We were meant to stay only a few days before escorting West Florida’s merchant ships back to England, but we found the Pensacola garrison with nothing resembling a naval defense – and the Spanish were coming out of New Orleans. I and the commander of the Hound decided to defy orders and stay to repair a vessel and organize the merchant vessels into an ersatz navy to defend the harbor until reinforcements arrived. As the Spanish invasion of Pensacola began it was decided that our guns, ammunition, and men were better spent defending Pensacola on shore. The Port Royal lost quite a few men in the explosion at the Queen’s Redoubt on May 8, 1781, and we were all sent to New York with the rest of the prisoners of war after the surrender.
Sources: 35, 27