Being a very spirited boy, he took this injunction so much to heart that he left the house immediately, with his clothes tied in a bundle over his shoulder, and keeping his intentions to himself, trudged off to Harwich, where he was invited to try his luck at sea, by the captain of a vessel of war, who had been staying with his father.
On 18 February 1762, he was appointed Commander of the sloop Albany and was ordered to join Commodore Young's squadron then blockading the estuaries of the rivers Seine and Orne, France.
On 13 July 1762, he was the commanding officer of a flotilla of small boats which, in a night raid, attempted to destroy landing barges moored in the river Orne.
After successful anti-convoy operations on the Atlantic crossing and coastal cruising, the ship became trapped in the York River, Virginia, where Symonds took supreme command of British naval forces in America.
[6] At the end of the siege of Yorktown, it was he (as the most senior naval officer present) and Charles Cornwallis, Lieutenant General of the British Armed Forces, who signed the Articles of Capitulation on 18 October 1781.