1. The letter has not been found, but it presumably dealt with the capture of the Hibernia, James Fanning, captain. The Hibernia, owned by Matthew Cottrell, James Kavanaugh, and James Smithwick of Maine, sailed from Waldoboro, Maine, on 7 Dec. 1800, bound for Jamaica with a cargo of lumber. On 22 Dec. the Hibernia was stopped by Captain Bairon of La Jeune Créole, privateer of Puerto Rico, who took Captain Fanning into the privateer and sent the Hibernia to San Juan, Puerto Rico. On 1 Jan. 1801 La Jeune Créole was captured by the U.S. frigate Chesapeake, Capt. Samuel Barron, and sent to Norfolk. Captain Fanning was taken to St. Bartholomew and made his way to Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, where he learned that the Hibernia and its cargo had been sold without trial. On 3 Feb. 1801 the Hibernia was formally tried and condemned at Guadeloupe, and on 18 Feb. Fanning filed a protest before Henry Hammond, the U.S. consul at Cap Français. In 1824 an award of $22,641.30 was made to Cottrell, Kavanaugh, and Smithwick’s executor under the 1819 U.S. treaty with Spain (Greg H. Williams, The French Assault on American Shipping, 1793–1813: A History and Comprehensive Record of Merchant Marine Losses [Jefferson, N.C., 2009], 180; Knox, Naval Documents, Quasi-War, description begins Dudley W. Knox, ed., Naval Documents Related to the Quasi-War between the United States and France (7 vols.; Washington, 1935–38). description ends 7:42, 67; William L. Lucey, “A Late Report on the Ship ‘Hibernia’ Captured by a French Privateer in the Year 1800,” New England Quarterly 17 [1944]: 101–5).