You must excuse this letter, as half our hands are on board our prize, and have had no time. I have been two days writing this; five minutes one time and ten minutes another time, and so on. We are just getting under way for Gibraltar. Now for the French and Spanish ships taken, burnt, run on shore, &c. &c.: Bucentaure, 80, taken. French. Santiss' Trinidada, 130, sunk. Spanish. Santa, taken, but afterwards got into Cadiz. Rayo, 110, sunk. French. Bahama, 74, taken. French. Argonauta, 80, sunk and burnt. Neptuna, 90, on shore. San Ildifonzo, 80, taken by the Defence. Algazeras, 74, on shore; Swiftsure, 74, Gib.; Berwick, 74, Gib. All English ships taken by the French last war. Intrepid, 74, burnt. Aigle, 80, on shore. Tonguer, 80, on shore [MS. uncertain]. De ..., 74, Gibraltar [ditto]. Argonauta, 74, Gib. Redoubtable, 74, sunk. Achell, 74, burnt. Manareo, 74, on shore. San Augustino, 74, Gibraltar. There is not one English ship lost, but a number lost their masts. (Signed) C. R. The writer had a brother, Andrew Reid, who bore a commission in the ships of Captain Parry in the first Arctic expedition. G. N. * * * * * HERALDIC ANOMALY. I beg to call the attention of the heraldic readers of "N. & Q." to a singular custom of displaying their coats of arms, peculiar to the Knights of St. John, of the venerable Language of England. It is well known that the members of this valiant brotherhood, throughout Europe, bear their paternal shield alone, surmounted, as the badge of their profession, with the particular device of the order, that is, On a chief, gules, a cross argent. The English knights, with their paternal coat, bore also, party-per-pale, that of their mothers, with the chief of the order over both, a strange heraldic anomaly! I have somewhere read, but where, for lack of a "note," I cannot recollect, that in making their proofs of nobility previous to their admission into the order, unlike the other Languages, the cavalier of England gave in only the names of their father and mother, but at the same time it was requisite that these two names should be able to prove a nobility of two hundred years each. Perhaps the custom of bearing the paternal shield impaled with the maternal sprung from these proofs. In the British Museum, Harl. MSS. 1386., may be seen three examples of this custom, in a paper entitled, _A Note of certain Knights of Rhodes_, "in prioratu Sancti Johannis Jerusalem."