Whether the merchants expressed their acknowledgments to Captain Dyneley in any form is not recorded in the official papers from which these facts are drawn; but General Dalrymple in his despatch to the Admiralty stated the case not unfairly, though it cannot be said that he wrote with any undue appreciation of the services of the Post-Office commander. He admitted that the capture of the two most formidable ships in the hostile flotilla was due, the one directly, and the other indirectly, to Captain Dyneley’s enterprise and pluck; and added, “his zeal and disinterestedness are highly commendable, as from his instructions he had a good deal to lose.” On Captain Dyneley’s return to England his own chiefs were well able to interpret this carefully guarded language, and from them at least he obtained the admiration which was his due. The Postmaster General prevailed on the Admiralty to convey to him a special expression of thanks and approval, and marked their own sense of his conduct by an honorarium of a hundred and fifty guineas. The Patriotic Society voted him a handsome piece of plate, and congratulations reached him from every quarter. It is satisfactory to read that recognition of his gallant conduct reached him promptly, because the time within which it could serve to gratify him was already short. The “Duke of Montrose” lay at Falmouth until the middle of November, when she sailed again for the West Indies. A month later she was within fifty leagues of Barbados, that fatal region in which so many Packets had to fight for their existence, when in the early dawn a strange sail was descried from the masthead. An hour made it plain that the newcomer had altered her course and was chasing the Packet: in the course of the morning she drew so near that no doubt was left of her being a French Privateer. Captain Dyneley put his ship to her best point of sailing, and did all in his power to avoid an action as his instructions enjoined. Well as the “Duke of Montrose” sailed, however, the enemy sailed better, and throughout the day she gradually gained steadily. During the night she was not shaken off, and about 9 A.M. on the following day, December 12th, she came within range, opened fire, and almost at the same moment ran down and grappled the “Duke of Montrose,” hoping to capture her by a sudden assault. In an attack of this kind the superior numbers of the Privateer’s crew (she carried eighty-five men against twenty-eight on the Falmouth vessel) gave her an immense advantage, and this advantage was turned into an overwhelming preponderance by the fact that she possessed a long 12–pounder (called in one report a 24–pounder) fixed upon a traverse, and so capable of being directed on any spot with ease.