, 7th June 1809.

SIR,

I felicitate myself very much on being so happy as to have
occasion of renewing with your excellency the acquaintance I
was favoured with the last year. Your excellency's flattering
letter of the 4th instant gave me a very agreeable remembrance
of it; and I may give my hearty acknowledgments therefore, as
also for the news your excellency was pleased to annex.

The post arrived a short time ago from Stockholm, and did not
contain any thing of importance, but that matters stand well.
The German mail has not come, and, in general, the news was so
contradictory that nobody knew what to believe.

All our forces on the southern coast being in the necessity to
be drawn up to the northern parts of the country for repelling
the attack of the Russians, the coasts on this side will be
without sufficient defence. It is only in your excellency I may
fix my confidence, convinced as I am by the good intelligence
that subsists between both nations, and his Britannic Majesty's
benevolence towards Sweden, your excellency will not omit to
protect, as far as possible, the trade from Gothenburg and
through the Baltic, and prevent all hostile enterprises.

I should wish to have some of such gun-brigs as your excellency
can allow, and other small vessels, to send up to the Finnish
Gulf, where they would be of no little service.

I include myself in your excellency's friendship, which I shall
be very proud to possess; and wish no better than that your
excellency, with all your brave officers and men, with their
usual success, may frustrate the enemy's projects against us.
It is with these sincere sentiments,

I have the honour to remain, &c.
JOHAN AF PUKE.

At Carlscrona Sir James received intelligence of the fate of the
unfortunate Major Schill, who had taken possession of Stralsund; but
whose corps of 6,000, as well as himself, were surprised by a large
body of Danish and Dutch troops and cut to pieces. These accounts, and
a demand for bomb vessels to assist the Swedish flotilla, were sent to
the Admiralty.

In consequence of a solicitation from Baron Stedinck, the Swedish
Minister of Marine expressed the high satisfaction of the Duke Regent
at the arrangement Sir James had made, not only for the protection of
the coasts of Sweden on the south, east, and wes