From Benjamin Franklin to Sartine, 23 April 1780
To Sartine
LS:6 Archives de la Marine, copy: Library of Congress
Passy April 23d. 1780
Sir,
I thank your Excellency for expediting the Orders relative to the Sale of the Serapis.7 I suppose similar Orders are gone to Dunkerque for the Sale of the Countess of Scarborough. If not I beg you would be pleased to send them by the Bearer; as the Daily heavy Charge that must arise on a Delay of Dispatching the Alliance, makes me anxious to see the Affair finished.
I am ever with the greatest Respect Your Excellency’s most obedient & most humble Servant
B Franklin
His Exy M. De Sartine.
Notation: Rep le 5 mai
6. In WTF’s hand.
7. On April 22 Sartine sent orders to Port Commandant Thévenard and Commissaire Grandville at Lorient to sell the Serapis at public auction. Thévenard in turn promised to divide the proceedings among the crews of the Bonhomme Richard squadron but worried the Americans would try to bid up the selling price: Archives de la Marine, B2CDXIX: 7; B3DCLXXXII: 123–4. For Jean-Charles-Bernardin Charlot de La Grandville (1737–1804) see Didier Neuville, ed., Etat sommaire des archives de la marine antérieures à la Révolution (Paris, 1898), p. 137.