By the time Franklin received Francis Coffyn’s letter of September 18, below, enclosing a copy of the French government’s regulations concerning American prizes, he had already seen those regulations and had finally understood that he bore responsibility for judging the prizes’ legality. On September 18 he issued his first two certificates of condemnation. The one immediately below, printed at Passy in Fournier’s gros romain, is a form designed for the case of a single prize ship and was obviously composed with the help of a French hand. The document that follows, handwritten and in English, is a certificate judging the legality of multiple captures, including ships ransomed rather than being brought into port. It would serve as a model for all subsequent certificates covering multiple prizes or ransoms, which Franklin would continue to draft on an individual basis in English.

Four days after sending this printed form to the Admiralty of Vannes, Franklin submitted to them an identical certificate made out for another of Jones’s prizes, the Fortune.1 He filled out both forms himself, and in his perennial battle with French genders, wrote “Bonne” in the feminine even though it preceded “homme.” He also corrected by hand a number of typographical errors, adding the final “e” to “Capitaine” and drawing in cedillas, where needed, on the letter “c.” At some point thereafter he corrected the type, this time using the character “ç” and also deleting the “e” in the word “reçeu.” Only five examples of the second printing are known; one is dated December 21, 1779, and four are blank.2