In September 1743 he was appointed to the 70-gun ship Northumberland, which in the following spring was one of the fleet sent out to Lisbon under the command of Sir Charles Hardy the elder.
It was clearly the only sane thing to do, if he refused to accept the advice offered by the master and endeavour to lead the Frenchmen back to Hardy's fleet.
While with Vernon he must have been a capable officer; but since then, it is said, his skull had been fractured in a fall, ‘and a small matter of liquor rendered him quite out of order—which was his unhappy fate that day’ (A True and Authentick Narrative of the Action between the Northumberland and three French Men of War ... By an Eye-Witness).
‘We bore down on them,’ says the eye-witness, ‘so precipitately that our small sails were not stowed nor top-gallant sails furled before the enemy began to fire on us, and at the same time had the cabins to clear away; the hammocks were not stowed as they should be; in short, we had nothing in order as we should before action.’ About five o'clock the Northumberland closed with the Content and received her fire, but, without replying to it, ran down to the Mars.
The master, tried by court-martial on 1 February 1745, was sentenced to be imprisoned in the Marshalsea for life; he was spared the capital punishment on the ground that he had given good advice to his captain before the action.