Sir,
I felicitate myself very much on being so happy as to have occasion of renewing with your excellency the acquaintance I was favoured with the last year. Your excellency's flattering letter of the 4th instant gave me a very agreeable remembrance of it; and I may give my hearty acknowledgments therefore, as also for the news your excellency was pleased to annex.
The post arrived a short time ago from Stockholm, and did not contain any thing of importance, but that matters stand well. The German mail has not come, and, in general, the news was so contradictory that nobody knew what to believe.
All our forces on the southern coast being in the necessity to be drawn up to the northern parts of the country for repelling the attack of the Russians, the coasts on this side will be without sufficient defence. It is only in your excellency I may fix my confidence, convinced as I am by the good intelligence that subsists between both nations, and his Britannic Majesty's benevolence towards Sweden, your excellency will not omit to protect, as far as possible, the trade from Gothenburg and through the Baltic, and prevent all hostile enterprises.
I should wish to have some of such gun-brigs as your excellency can allow, and other small vessels, to send up to the Finnish Gulf, where they would be of no little service.
I include myself in your excellency's friendship, which I shall be very proud to possess; and wish no better than that your excellency, with all your brave officers and men, with their usual success, may frustrate the enemy's projects against us. It is with these sincere sentiments,
I have the honour to remain, &c.
Johan af Puké.
At Carlscrona Sir James received intelligence of the fate of the unfortunate Major Schill, who had taken possession of Stralsund; but whose corps of 6,000, as well as himself, were surprised by a large body of Danish and Dutch troops and cut to pieces. These accounts, and a demand for bomb vessels to assist the Swedish flotilla, were sent to the Admiralty.
In consequence of a solicitation from Baron Stedinck, the Swedish Minister of Marine expressed the high satisfaction of the Duke Regent at the arrangement Sir James had made, not only for the protection of the coasts of Sweden on the south, east, and west, but for his undertaking to proceed up the Gulf of Finland, to prevent the sailing of the Russian fleet, with his own powerful squadron.