Benjamin Franklin Papers
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The Eastern Navy Board to the American Commissioners, 9 April 1778

The Eastern Navy Board3 to the American Commissioners

L: American Philosophical Society; copy: Library of Congress

Boston April 9. 1778

The Navy Board Eastern department, present their Respects to the Honble: Commissioners at the Court of France, and Inclose them the Gazettes to this date, by the Ship Providence. Other Packages, they have by them for the Honble. Commissioners, they don’t think proper to risque thro’ the dangerous Channel this Ship is obliged to pass.4

Notation: Card from the Navy Board 9 Ap. 1778

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

3For the establishment of this board, to handle naval affairs in New England, see William M. Fowler, Jr., Rebels under Sail: the American Navy during the Revolution (New York, 1976), pp. 74–5.

4I.e., through the British fleet based on Newport. The new frigate, ordered to France to obtain military supplies, was blockaded in the Providence River. She escaped at the end of April, after a brisk engagement, and made her way to Nantes. William J. Morgan, Captains to the Northward: the New England Captains in the Continental Navy (Barre, Mass., 1959), p. 129.

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