Having had occasion to say so much respecting this public letter, it’s omission might, by the malignant, be construed into a wish to prevent it’s being sufficiently investigated.  Truth, however, is always a gainer by minute enquiry:  notwithstanding, therefore, the repetition which this letter necessarily contains of what has been already seen by the reader in Colonel Drinkwater’s Narrative, it is here subjoined—­

     “Victory,
     off Lagos Bay,
     February 16, 1797.

     “SIR,

“The hopes of falling in with the Spanish fleet, expressed in my letter to you of the 13th instant, were confirmed, that night, by our distinctly hearing the report of their signal-guns, and by intelligence received from Captain Foote, of his majesty’s ship Niger, who had, with equal judgment and perseverance, kept company with them for several days, on my prescribed rendezvous; which, from the strong south-east winds, I had never been able to reach:  and, that they were not more than three or four leagues from us.  I anxiously waited the dawn of day; when, being on the starboard tack, Cape St. Vincent bearing east by north seven leagues, I had the satisfaction of seeing a number of ships, extending from south-west to south, the wind then at west by south.  At forty minutes past ten, the weather being extremely hazy, La Bonne Citoyenne made the signal that the ships were of the line, twenty-five in number:  his majesty’s squadron, consisting of the fifteen ships of the line named in the margin, were happily formed, in the most complete order of sailing, in two lines.  By carrying a press of sail, I was fortunate in getting in with the enemy’s fleet at half past eleven o’clock, before it had time to connect and form a regular order of battle.  Such a moment was not to be lost:  and, confident in the skill, valour, and discipline, of the officers and men I had the happiness to command, and judging that the honour of his majesty’s arms, and the circumstances of the war in these seas, required a considerable degree of enterprize, I felt myself justified in departing from the regular system; and, passing through their fleet, in a line formed with the utmost celerity, tacked, and thereby separated one-third from the main body.  After a partial cannonade, which prevented their rejunction till the evening, and by the very great exertions of the ships which had the good fortune to arrive up with the enemy on the larboard tack, the ships named in the margin were captured, and the action ceased about five o’clock in the evening.  I inclose the most correct list I have been able to obtain of the Spanish fleet opposed to me, amounting to twenty-seven sail of the line; and an account of the killed and wounded in his majesty’s ships, as well as in those taken from the enemy.  The moment the latter, almost totally dismasted, and his majesty’s ships the Captain and Culloden, are in a state to put to sea, I shall avail myself of the first favourable