Yet another interesting connection between Kent and the sea service of bygone times is this. H.M.S. _Kent’s_ name is not the only man-of-war name associated with the county that has figured in the fighting days of old. No fewer than eighteen other man-of-war names connected with the county of Kent have from time to time been borne on the roll of the British fleet. It was on board a _Canterbury_ that a notable naval officer of the earlier part of the eighteenth century, Captain George Walton, penned words which have been quoted over and over again as a masterpiece of conciseness. He had been in pursuit of a Spanish squadron, and on his return, as most of us have read, reported as follows:— “_To Admiral Sir George Byng, Commander-in-Chief._ “Sir, “We have taken and destroyed all the Spanish ships and vessels which were upon the coast, as per margin. “I am, etc., “GEORGE WALTON. “Canterbury, off Syracusa, _August 16, 1718_. “One of 60 guns, one of 54, one of 40, one of 24—taken; one of 54, two of 40, one of 30 guns, with a fireship and two bomb vessels—burnt.” As a fact, unfortunately, Captain Walton’s “dispatch” was written in quite another way. The captain of the _Canterbury_ really sent the admiral a letter of two pages. What is passed off as his whole “dispatch,” is actually only the concluding sentence of the letter, excerpted and dressed up. An unscrupulous admiralty official, for the purposes of a book on the campaign, manipulated the letter and printed its last paragraph by itself as the entire despatch. Historians following one another have since then simply copied Secretary Corbett.