John Bondfield to the Commissioners, 16 June 1778
John Bondfield to the Commissioners
Bordeaux 16 June 1778
Honble. Sirs
I had the Honor to write you the 13.13 and 14th Instant.1 Mr. Emery receiv’d letters from Capt. Cunningham at Corrunha advising their Arrival at that Port from Cadiz having made four Prizes in the Passage.2 We have it reported the Boston fell in with two privateers, one of eighteen Guns she took, the other got off.3 I cannot trace it so as give implicite faith.
The Jersey Privateers stil continue upon the Coast of Spain they have taken a vessel belonging to Bayenne having Tobacco on board from the Cape and a small schooner with eighty hhds from Edenten.
Letters from Lisbon mention the arrival of a Vessel at that Port from the Western Islands that fell in with the Fleet under Comte D’Estaing near to Tercera4 the 23 May.
Captain de Siau is come down, A suitable vessel is purchased to mount 24 nine pounders two hundred and forty men and a small tender is on the stocks which together are to be compleatly equipt and at Sea by the 20th July. I am with due respect Your honors Most Obedient H Servant
John Bondfield
RC (PPAmP: Franklin Papers); addressed: “The Honble Benj. Franklin. Arthur Lee John Adams Esqr. Commissioners from Congress at Paris”; docketed: “Mr. Bondfield 16 June 1778.”
1. Neither the second letter of the 13th nor that of the 14th has been printed here. For the former, see the first letter of the 13th (note 1, above); for the latter, see Joy Castle to the Commissioners, 22 June (note 2, below).
2. John Emery, a Bilbao merchant, in writing to Arthur Lee from Bordeaux on 10 June (MH-H: Lee Papers), had referred to a letter from La Coruña of 18 May reporting the capture of four prizes by Gustavus Conyngham and the Revenge. Although four prizes were mentioned, only three, all captured on 4 May (the brigs Maria, Dispatch, and Siren), can be identified as likely to have been mentioned in a letter of 18 May (, table facing p. 152).
3. Punctuation for this sentence editorially supplied. The report was erroneous; no mention of such an encounter appears in Samuel Tucker’s log for the Boston (MH-H).
4. That is, Terceira, an island in the central Azores.