The departure of the Spanish troops was scheduled for the twenty-fourth of August. The British held ready for them three transports which on the thirtieth sailed through the gate of la Punta. One of them carried the Governor and his family. On his arrival in Madrid he was tried by a war council, which for his lack of foresight and energy in preparing the defense of Havana, condemned him to exile. But the king commuted the sentence to imprisonment for life. The British commanders, no longer needed in Havana, worn out with fatigue and weakened by the climate, also hurried to leave. Brigadier Burton returned to North America, Admiral Keppel to Jamaica, Pococke to England. He met with terrible tempests, lost one ship of line, and twelve transports. But the greeting he received on his arrival in England was most enthusiastic. Though the parliament was divided on the question of extending British conquests in Spanish America, there was still the party representing commercial interests to be reckoned with. With a promptness quite unusual at that time a book was published shortly after the capture of Havana, which outlined the course to be pursued in order to reap the benefits of the South Sea trade, which so far had been in the hands of the French and Spanish. It was entitled "The Great Importance of the Havana" set forth in an "Essay on the Nature and Methods of Carrying on a Trade to the South Sea and the West Indies, by Robert Allen, Esq., who resided some years in the Kingdom of Peru, London, printed for J. Hinxman in Paternoster Row and D. Wilson in the Strand, in 1762. Dedicated to the most Hon. Thomas Harley, Esq., M. P. and Merchant of London." The author begins with reference to an old tradition that a Prince of Wales had made an expedition to the coast of Mexico in 1190 and died there. Upon this tradition and the assertion that the Mexican language abounds in Welsh words, he seems to base the right of British priority to Spanish America.