7.  That his majesty be addressed for the report of the commissioners for executing the office of lord high admiral to his majesty in council, upon the petition of the merchants, relating to their losses during the war, to be laid before the house.

8.  That the schoolmaster and a mariner on board his majesty’s ship, the Duke, do attend the said committee.

Six days after these orders passed, the said accounts and report were presented to the house by the secretary of the admiralty.

There were also laid before them copies of above one hundred letters, from and to the secretary of state, admirals, ambassadours, consuls, commanders of his majesty’s ships, and trading vessels; from the commissioners of the sick and hurt seamen, with heads of a cartel for exchange of prisoners; and memorials and representations from merchants.

Also a list of ships taken since the commencement of the war, and of the prisoners made by the enemy, also letters from several of them relating to their treatment, and from the captain-general of the province where the said seamen were imprisoned, relating to an exchange; several certificates and depositions, and a proposal by the lords of the admiralty for a general exchange of prisoners; also copies of the orders of the commissioners of admiralty to captains and commanders on the enemy’s coast.

Petitions from the wives of seamen taken prisoners; letters to and from the principal officers of the enemy, prisoners in Britain, relating to the exchange.

Certificates of the discharge of several prisoners, by the enemy, on promise that a like number of the prisoners in Britain should be discharged.

The secretary of the Admiralty also laid before the house a book of the regulations and instructions relating to the sea-service, established by his majesty in council.

These requisites being laid before the house of commons, they went into a committee on the twenty-third day of their sitting, heard one of the petitioners, several witnesses, and desired to sit again.

In the mean time were presented to the house seventeen other letters concerning sea affairs, and an account when the East India company first applied, since the war began, for a convoy to St. Helena, and when they sailed, and what number of ships came under the said convoy, and on the twenty-fifth day of sitting the committee heard more witnesses.

Next day they proceeded, when an account was brought in of the Spanish prisoners released, by what orders, and on what conditions; also an account of the number of seamen employed the last year, distinguishing how many at home, and how many abroad, also of the number of ships and vessels of war, distinguishing the rates.

The secretary of the admiralty also presented a list of the names of the merchant ships, and the masters, as have behaved so negligently as to delay the convoys from whom they had taken sailing orders, or that have abandoned the same, or that have been any ways disobedient to the instructions established for good government, with the narration of the facts since the beginning of the war.