SURRENDER OF CORNWALLIS (1781). Source.—Gentleman’s Magazine. Vol. li., p. 539.

Whitehall.—By Sir H. Clinton’s letter to Lord G. Germaine, dated off Chesapeak, October 29, and brought by the Rattlesnake sloop, capt. Melcombe, it appears that “the fleet and army, which sailed from the Hook on the 19th, arrived off Cape Charles on the 24th, when they had the mortification to hear that lord Cornwallis had proposed terms of capitulation to the enemy on the 18th. This intelligence was brought by the pilot of the Charon, and some other persons who came off from the shore, and said they had made their escape from York on the 18th, and had not heard any firing there since the day before. The Nymph frigate also arriving from New-York, says the General, brought me a letter from his lordship, dated the 15th, the desponding tenor of which gives me the most alarming apprehensions of its truth.

Since then we have been plying off the Capes, with variable and hard gales of wind, to the present hour, without being able to procure any further information, except from two men taken in a Canoe, whose report exactly corresponds with the former.

Comparing, therefore, the intelligence given by those people, and several others since come in, with the purport of lord Cornwallis’s letter, a copy of which I have the honour to inclose for your lordship’s information; we cannot entertain the least doubt of his lordship’s having capitulated, and that we are unfortunately too late to relieve him; which being the only object of the expedition, the admiral has determined upon returning with his fleet to Sandy Hook.

I beg leave to mention to your lordship, that the army is under the greatest obligations to the admirals, the captains, and the officers of the king’s ships, for the cheerfulness with which they submitted to many and great inconveniences for our accommodation on this service.”

The Dispatches from admiral Graves were to the same effect as the above from Sir H. Clinton.

The terms of capitulation have not yet officially been received.