the public service to the utmost, and in endeavouring by every obliging considerate attention, to convenience the situation of individual officers and men, whenever the circumstances of the moment have put it in their power to afford their disinterested and truly hospitable assistance.
In April, 1814, Captain Roberts was removed to the Pylades, ship-sloop, and sent direct from the Mediterranean to North America. In Sept. following, while cruising off the entrance of the bay of Fundy, he recaptured, with his boats, after some considerable resistance, a fine teak-built ship called the Betsy, of 600 tons, with a cargo of spices, which had been taken on the coast of Sumatra, by an American privateer: in this affair Captain Roberts and 2 of his men were wounded.
The Pylades subsequently joined company with Rear-Admiral Hotham, off New London; and Captain Roberts was entrusted by that officer with the blockade of Newport, Rhode Island, on which coast he captured and destroyed many of the enemy’s vessels. After the conclusion of hostilities between Great Britain and the United States, he was sent with despatches to Cumberland Island, and ordered from thence to the West Indies. His post commission bears date June 13, 1815.
Since the general peace, Captain Roberts was under the painful necessity of quitting England, and seeking an asylum abroad, in consequence of a very heavy pecuniary demand having been made on him by the proprietors of a Spanish vessel that he seized, under very peculiar circumstances, in 1812; and but for the kind consideration of the Board of Admiralty, in unison with the strenuous and unremitting exertions of his early and constant friend, the Earl of Pembroke (who died in 1827), he must ever have remained an exile from his native country.
This officer married. May 31, 1817, Charlotte, eldest daughter of the late Lord Chief Justice Dallas, and niece to Sir George Dallas, Bart. He has issue two sons and one daughter. His only brother, William Gilbert Roberts, Esq. is a Commander, R.N.
