30 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I3I 



Carolina was realized shortly after, when he was ordered to escort a 

 convoy to America and assume his former command as senior officer 

 present at Charleston. On March 26, 1745, he arrived at his old sta- 

 tion and began the direction of naval operations off the Carolinas. 

 The threat from the Spanish was still real, and naval patrols were 

 necessary to prevent surprise attacks on the coastal settlements. 



Sickness plagued the Alborough and Utting was unable to keep the 

 sea as he should have. Enemy privateers arrived off the coasts of 

 Carolina and Georgia, and the captain was at his wit's end to protect 

 the coastal settlements from Fredrica, in Georgia, to Charleston with 

 his little squadron. As a result some discontented merchants in 

 Charleston complained to the Carolina proprietors that Utting was not 

 doing his duty. These complaints seem to have been unjustified, for 

 the Governor, Council, and several principal merchants refused to sign 

 them. Thus misfortune harassed Utting during his last cruise until 

 early in January 1746, when he died on board the Alborough in Rebel- 

 lion Road, Charleston, just after returning from a patrol ofif the coast. 



On April 18, 1744, while Utting was on the high seas returning to 

 face a court martial for the loss of the Loo, the Lords of the Ad- 

 miralty had ordered the Navy Board to "cause a new ship of forty- four 

 guns to be built in the room of the Looe lately lost near the Gulph 

 of Florida." ^-' Today the name "Looe" is peri:>etuated by the sub- 

 merged reef lying off the central Florida Keys, visited by occasional 

 fishermen who must wonder at the strange name it bears, never 

 dreaming that the quiet little reef was once the scene of as dramatic 

 a story of shipwreck and rescue as can be found in the annals of the 

 English colonies in America. 



127 Admiralty Out-Lctters, ADM 2, vol. 205, p. 344. 



