I represent Thomas Joyse. I was a sailor on 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. As the Spanish invasion of Pensacola began it was decided that our guns, ammunition, and men were better spent defending Pensacola on shore. I was one of the crew stationed at the Middle Redoubt [also called the Prince of Wales Redoubt] at Fort George on May 6, 1781. Robert Farmar‘s journal of the Siege of Pensacola has this entry for 6 MAY 1781: “one of the seamen belonging to the Port Royal was picking up the shot fired from the enemy a 24 lb. ball struck him in the britch and buried itself in his flesh – he lived after it about five hours.” Those five hours took me to a date of death of May 7, 1781. I probably still lie in an unmarked grave in Pensacola.
Sources: 8, 28