Note 7 — THE PRINCESS OF ORANGE.
Reading edition
Captain William Dowell died in 1768, aet. 49, "a good husband, a sincere friend, and an honest man", so says his tombstone in Christ Church yard. He had an important part in the privateering expeditions from Philadelphia in this war. In the Memoirs of Peter Henry Bruce, chiefly occupied with his service in the Russian army under Peter the Great, but ending with a narrative of military engineering services in the Bahamas and South Carolina, that author gives an account (pp. 403-408, 421) of the capture of two rich Spanish prizes in September, 1742, "by John Sibbald of the George schooner, and William Dowall, of the Joseph and Mary sloop, both privateers from Philadelphia", who brought them into New Providence; and he vehemently accuses Governor Tinker of defrauding them and their Philadelphia owners by machinations lasting all through that winter. "All our Privateers", he adds, "intended to have made this place their general rendezvous; but the treatment Sibbald and Dowall met with, prevented any from coming near us". Later, May, 1744, the journal of William Black shows Dowell as again commander of the George schooner, 14 carriage and 18 swivel guns, then fitting out in the Delaware; and in 1746 he commanded the Pandour privateer. Pa. Mag. Hist., I. 247, XXXII. 465.