1. Bondfield had written to the Commissioners on 6 April, reporting that the Boston’s salute to the castle at Bordeaux had not been returned because the officials there had received no instructions (Cal. Franklin Papers, A.P.S. description begins I. Minis Hays, comp., Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin in the Library of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1908; 5 vols. description ends , 1:390). On receiving the letter of the 6th and unaware that instructions had already been sent, the Commissioners apparently wrote to Sartine on 20 April (not found) about the matter, to which Sartine replied on 26 April (below).

Since exchange of salutes was an attribute of sovereignty, it is understandable that the authorities at Bordeaux without approval of the French government hesitated to take an action that could be interpreted as recognition of American independence. To a degree, however, the question was moot, for on 14 and 15 Feb., at Quiberon Bay, the Ranger and Independence had exchanged salutes, as had the privateer General Mifflin, at Brest, in the summer of 1777. Moreover, American ships had exchanged salutes at St. Croix and St. Eustatius as early as 1776, the latter incident provoking sharp British protests and ultimately the recall of the island’s governor (Allen, Naval Hist. of the Amer. Revolution description begins Gardner Weld Allen, A Naval History of the American Revolution, Boston and New York, 1913; 2 vols. description ends , 1:159–160, 280–281, 338–341; Morison, John Paul Jones description begins Samuel Eliot Morison, John Paul Jones, a Sailor’s Biography, Boston and Toronto, 1959. description ends , p. 128–130; Bemis, Diplomacy of the Amer. Revolution description begins Samuel Flagg Bemis, The Diplomacy of the American Revolution: The Foundations of American Diplomacy, 1775–1823, New York and London, 1935. description ends , p. 122–123).