protection for any fleet of merchantmen crossing the North Sea. In the ensuing summer, he escorted a convoy out of soundings, to the westward; and on the completion of that service we find him appointed to the York 74, then cruising off the Scheldt, but subsequently attached to the Channel fleet, and occasionally employed in the blockade of Rochefort and l’Orient.
After the abdication of Napoleon Buonaparte, in 1814, Captain Schomberg, with the Vengeur 74, Captain Tristram Robert Ricketts, and Erne 20, Captain the Hon. W. J. (now Lord) Napier, under his orders, conducted a body of troops from Bourdeaux to Quebec, each line-of-battle ship carrying out no less than 1000 men, in addition to her proper complement. On his return home, he submitted to Lord Melville and the Board of Admiralty a plan for the future victualling of the seamen and marines of H.M. fleet, wherein he was the first to propose the substitution of tea, sugar, etc. for half the usual allowance of spirits; heaving it, however, at the option of captains and other commanding officers, to issue the full allowance of grog whenever they might judge it necessary, in bad weather, &c. &c. This suggestion was highly approved of by Lord Melville, from whom he received a most flattering letter on the occasion; eight or nine years, however, elapsed before a fair trial was made, when the alteration was found to have proved so very acceptable to the crew of the Thetis frigate, commanded by Sir John Phillimore, that a general change in the system of victualling H.M. navy was immediately determined upon. From this much benefit must result in future wars, particularly when troops are embarked, as on such occasions drunkenness, irregularities of every kind, and consequently punishments, have always hitherto been found greatly to increase in consequence of the ease with which sailors could obtain grog from sea-sick and other soldiers, who will now have little or none to dispose of. At the close of the war with America, he commanded a squadron off Cape Clear; and in Aug. 1815, we find him putting the York out of commission.
In 1818, Captain Schomberg printed, for private distribu-
