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[Page 5]
trying occasions executed the duties required of me, and have been awarded by my superior officers, and other distinguished personages, not only with a base approval of my conduct, but with distinguished marks of their friendship and esteem. It is this Gentleman, that makes me feel the more distressed in my public character undergoing so minute an investigation, at the suit of such a person as my prosecutor. I candidly and without reserve avow that I am not a tame and indifferent observer of the manner in which Officers placed under my orders, conduct themselves in the performance of their several duties.
A signal or any communication from a Commanding Officer, have ever been to me an indication for exertion and alacrity to carry into effect the purport thereof, and peradventure I may occasionally have appeared to some of those officers unnecessarily anxious for its execution, by exhibiting any action or gesture peculiar to myself. To such gentlemen, I do not show appeal, but to you Mr. President and the Members of this Court, who know and have experienced the arduous task of responsibility, and that of the magnitude of one of His Majesty's Seventy four gun Ships, which will I am persuaded acquit me of any apparent impetuosity, and would plead in extenuation for my imputed charges, attributing the warmth of temper which at intervals I may have discovered to my zeal for that service in which I