No problem!

But, all that said, could only say for sure it didn’t happen with primary sources that are an ocean away.

The British warship Medway evidently captured a French privateer named Pontchartrain off Ireland in 1697. And a different Pontchartrain captured a Bristol merchantman loaded with tobacco in August 1707 and had it condemned in Brittany, so unlikely that was in the West Indies.

I can’t absolutely rule it out, but no sign of it in pertinent secondary sources. I can’t make sense of it with what I can find about the employment of the named ships, either; looks like Guernsey might’ve been in the West Indies in 1707, and Mermaid possibly from 1704 but was broken up in 1706.

The abstract of a journal article entitled “‘It is ticklish meddling with the navy’: The British navy and Caribbean contraband trade, c. 1713–1750.”

The International Journal of Maritime History published its February issue today, containing the Forum “The British Navy in the West Indies in the Age of Sail,” which includes an article by yours truly. doi.org/10.1177/0843...
Please let me know if you would like to read but don’t have access.

The 2023 AHA Academic Jobs Report While the number of academic job listings for historians continues to be stable, there has been a decrease in tenured or tenure-track positions.

2023 AHA Academic Jobs Report #Skystorians #EarlyModern

'general stability conceals two troubling patterns: (1) the rapidly declining number of jobs for premodern historians and (2) a decrease in the number of jobs that come with the possibility of tenure.'

www.historians.org/research-and...

@rauchway.bsky.social could you please add me to the historians feed? Thanks!