On 10 September Vestal gave chase to and captured the Mercury packet, having on board Henry Laurens, previously president of Congress, on his way to the Netherlands as ambassador of the revolted American colonies.
Fitton continued with Captain Keppel during the war in different ships, and as midshipman on HMS Fortitude was present at the relief of Gibraltar in 1782.
On rejoining, Fitton invited Whylie by signal to come to breakfast, and while waiting caught a large shark that was under the stern.
One, which he drove ashore, he boarded by swimming, himself and the greater part of his men plunging into the sea with their swords in their mouths.
When war with France resumed in 1803, Fitton was again sent out to Abergavenny and appointed to command her tender, the schooner HMS Gipsy.
On the failure of the expedition Gipsy carried the despatches to the admiral, and Fitton, in accordance with the senior officer's recommendation, received a promotion to lieutenant.
[2] Later that year, on 26 October, after a weary chase of sixty-seven hours, Pitt engaged the French privateer schooner Superbe.
HMS Drake came on the scene shortly before the denouement of the action, with the result that the French commander drove his vessel on shore at Ocoa Bay (now in the Dominican Republic), enabling him and his surviving crew to flee before the British retrieved their quarry.
[a] Houx afterwards equipped a brig, which he named Revanche de la Superbe, and sent an invitation to Fitton to meet him at a place named; however, before the message arrived Fitton had been superseded as captain by the 17-year-old Thomas John Cochrane, son of admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, who was then commanding officer of the Leeward Islands station.
[7] Then on 26 August, Fitton captured the American ship Dido, and shared the prize money, by agreement, with HMS Gallant.
The real-life Fitton was featured as the principal character in a series of eleven novels by the Welsh author Showell Styles, portraying actual events in the life of this naval officer.