From Benjamin Franklin to Gustavus Conyngham, 20 June 1781
To Gustavus Conyngham
Copy: Library of Congress
Passy, June 20. 1781.
Sir,
I received with great Pleasure the News of your being safely arrived at Dunkirk.4 Mrs. Conyngham is not yet come up to Paris. I believe she has continued at l’orient ever since her Arrival. I shall write to her to Day, to acquaint her with your Escape.
Now you are at Dunkirk, I wish you would settle the Demand of a Number of Men who went out with you from thence and were taken in a Prize and carry’d into England. They have long worry’d me to be paid their Advance Money & Wages and Prize Money5 in which I could do nothing having no Informations of what might be due to them.— The Minister here has Apply’d to me in their Behalf; and I know not what Answer to make him till I hear from you. I am, with great Esteem, Sir, Your &c.
I enclose one of their Memories.6
Capt. Conyngham
4. About which Conyngham had written on June 16, above.
5. At the end of January the prize crew (which first had sailed aboard Conyngham’s cutter the Revenge) had asked BF for the money and had complained to Naval Minister Castries of BF’s unresponsiveness: XXXIV, 367–8, 378–9.
6. Probably a copy of one of the memoirs described in XXXIV, 379n.