The Navy Board for the Eastern Department to the Commissioners, 8 June 1778

The Navy Board for the Eastern Department to the Commissioners

Navy Board Eastern department Boston June 8th. 1778

Gentlemen

Agreeable to the directions of the Honorable Marine Committee, We have provided the Scooner Dispatch, Corbin Barns Master, for the purpose of Conveying to you some Packetts of Great Importance; which are to be forwarded to you through the Council of this State.1 We have therefore only to wish them Safe to your hands, and to desire that your Orders may be given to furnish the Captain, with such Supplies as may be necessary to provide for his return, and to defrey his Expences there, Among which by Contract is a months pay, to be Advanced to himself and Crew, and a Gratification to him of One hundred—dollars, in lieu of primage,2 he would have been intitled to on a Merchant Voyage. We presume the Council will give you the American Intelligences. We shall only Transmit you by this Oppertunity the Gazzettes published here Since our last3 and beg leave to Subscribe ourselves with the Greatest respect Your most Obedt: humble Servts.

J Warren

J. Deshon

RC (PPAmP: Franklin Papers); addressed: “The Honble: The Commissioners of the United States of America Paris”; docketed: “Navy Board June 8 1778 ans. July 29.”

1. In accordance with orders dated 5 May from the Marine Committee, the Navy Board prepared the Dispatch for sea so that it might carry additional copies of the ratified Franco-American treaties to France (Charles Oscar Paullin, ed., Outletters of the Continental Marine Committee and Board of Admiralty, 2 vols., N.Y., 1914, 1:234). The Committee for Foreign Affairs, under a letter dated [15?] May (R. H. Lee, Letters, ed. Ballagh description begins The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, ed. James C. Ballagh, New York, 1911–1914; 2 vols. description ends , 1:407), sent the packets containing the treaties to the Massachusetts Council, which in turn sent them on to the Commissioners under a covering letter dated 9 June (PPAmP: Franklin Papers).

2. The allowance made by the shipper to the master and crew for the loading and care of the cargo.

3. Presumably that of 9 April (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 , 1:393).

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Source Project: Adams Papers
Title: The Navy Board for the Eastern Department to the Commissioners, 8 June 1778
Authors: Warren, James
Deshon, John
Navy Board in Boston
Recipients: First Joint Commission at Paris
Adams, John
Date: 8 June 1778

Reference

Cite as: “The Navy Board for the Eastern Department to the Commissioners, 8 June 1778,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-06-02-0143. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 6, March–August 1778, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983, pp. 194–195.]