I represent James McNemara. I was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy and commander of HMS Hound from August 1779 to May 1781. The Hound was a sloop of 14 guns that served in the West Indies and Gulf Coast during the British colonial period. It survived the hurricane of October 1778 and became part of the small naval defense of Pensacola Bay – along with the Mentor and Port Royal – as the Spanish began to close in. On April 5, 1780, we arrived with HMS Port Royal with a convoy from Jamaica. We found the garrison completely without naval defenses against the Spanish fleet. Though we had been ordered to stay only a few days and then get back to the work of keeping trade vessels moving, we decided to stay – we repaired and re-armed a derelict vessel and organized the merchant vessels into an ersatz defense of the harbor until reinforcements could arrive. Like the crews of the other vessels, the crew of the Hound spent more and more time ashore as it became apparent our efforts were better spent assisting the army than trying to take on the much larger Spanish fleet. On February 25, 1781, the Hound was sent to escort a convoy of smaller merchant ships to Engalnd, mostly to relieve the desperate straits of the merchants and tradesmen in the province. It did not return before the surrender of Pensacola on May 10, 1781.
Sources: 35, 27, 133