The Orion formed part of the squadron under Commodore Goodall, when reviewed by King George III., off Plymouth, Aug. 18th, 1789[1]. In the following year, she accompanied Rear-Admiral Cornish to Barbadoes, where, in consequence of an alarm of fire in the fore-magazine, the greater part of her crew jumped overboard, and several men perished. During the Russian armament, in 1791, she was attached to the fleet under Lord Hood, assembled at Spithead. The Hyaena, after cruising for some time on the Jamaica station, where she took about twenty prizes, at the commencement of the French revolutionary war, was captured, off Hispaniola, by la Concorde frigate, of 44 guns and 340 men. A few days afterwards, the blacks at Cape François having risen en masse, and commenced a general massacre of the white inhabitants, Mr. Conolly took advantage of the confusion, and effected his escape to an American brig in the harbour. He then procured the loan of a boat, re-landed, and succeeded in bringing off the whole of his shipmates, with whom he sailed for Jamaica, in an English cartel, during the conflagration of the town.
On the 4th Sept. 1795, Lieutenant Conolly was appointed to his old ship the Theseus, in which, successively commanded by Captains Robert Calder, Herbert Browell, Augustus Montgomery, and John Aylmer, he served on the Channel and Mediterranean stations, until May 20th, 1797. He was then removed to the Irresistible 74, Captain George Martin, off Cadiz. On the 3d July following, he commanded that ship’s launch, and had three of his men wounded, in a conflict with the Spanish flotilla, respecting which Messrs. Clarke and M‘Arthur, the biographers of Nelson, say:
