I represent George Burdon, Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and commander of HMS West Florida. The West Florida was an armed sloop and at the time she was active in the Gulf Coast region, she was the only ship capable of armed combat. In the fall of 1776, Governor Chester ordered us to haul lumber from the naval defenses at the Red Cliffs (known as Barrancas by the Spanish), Santa Rosa Island, and Tartar Point to the town of Pensacola to shore up the fort there. That seemed like a waste of a good fighting ship to me, so instead, I took the West Florida down the bay toward Santa Rosa Island and the mouth of the harbor, to keep an eye out for shady Spanish vessels. In the summer of 1777, we hunted smugglers on Lake Pontchartrain taking goods between British West Florida and Spanish New Orleans – illegal at the time. I left the West Florida on January 10, 1779 due to illness. I was replaced by Lt. John Payne, and the West Florida headed to Philadelphia. In May 1779, I petitioned for a grant of land on Brier Creek that was rejected; I tried again in January 1780, and was given 260 acres on the Escambia River.
Sources: 31, 35, 80