IN the beginning of the Year 1689. many Ships and Vessels were hired into their Majesties Service, to carry their Majesties Land-Forces, with Arms, Ammuni­tion, Stores and Provisions for Ireland, in order to the reducing thereof; none departing the said Service, until discharged by their Majesties Officers, or lost in the Service, and others of them are still continued in the same to this very day.

Several of the Masters and Mariners of these Ships have died in this Service, through the Hardships which they have undergone therein.

It has been the Unhappiness of the Masters, Owners and Proprietors, That after their Ships were hired they were called by the Name of TRANSPORT-SHIPS, (although several of them taken up by the Navy and Ordnance) whereby they have been denied the Benefit of any Money hitherto given for Payment of the Navy and Army; whereunto they were justly intitled (as they are advis'd.) So that the Owners and Proprietors of most of the Ships which are discharged the Service, have received very little of the Money due unto them for the same, more than a small matter called Imprest Money; paid to some few for one Month, to others for a Fortnight, but to many nothing at all.

Those Ships also that are still continued in the Service have likewise received only some small Imprest Money, with a very little more, towards Subsistence, and most of that in Tallies upon the Fond of the double Ninepences Excise payable after Nine Hun­dred and Sixty Thousand Pounds; which, through the pressing Necessities of the Ma­sters and Owners, they have been constrained to receive and turn into ready Money at a very great Loss.

These unhappy and unexpected Disappointments have proved very fatal to most of the Owners and Proprietors, therein concerned; in that they have not only expended their ready Money, but contracted very many great Debts, in victualling their Ships, and paying their Seamens Wages, as far as they could. Several of them having been arrested and imprisoned for the Debts contracted in this Service; and their Wives and Children thereby reduced to very great Necessities, and some to a begging Condition. Several of the Ships have also been arrested and condemned by the Seamen for Wages due, and others lying in a perishing Condition, for want of Money to repair them, to the utter disabling of them in the way of their Trades. And this is the more deplorable, that in a greater or lesser degree, it is the Case of all the Sea-Ports of this Kingdom, even from Whitehaven to Berwick upon Tweed. The Summ total yet due, upon account of this Service, by the nearest Computation, being betwixt Three and Four Hundred Thou­sand Pounds.

And whereas it has been suggested, That his Majesty has been abused in the Ton­nage or Burthen of the Ships and Vessels imployed in this Service; the Owners have submitted their Ships to an Admeasurement, in obedience to his Majesties Patent gran­ted to M^r John Bowles for that purpose; whereby it appears, that as there are several of their Ships that do under-measure, so there are many that do over-measure considera­bly. Moreover, many of those their Ships, as well English as Forreign built, that have under-measured, do really carry the Tonnage for which the Masters hired them into this Service; as it appears by the Custom-House Books, that they have all along paid the King's Customs for so much Tonnage as they are lett for, if not more.