1. The enclosures have not been found, but according to JM to Clinton, 3 May 1806, they were copies of depositions by Jesse Pierce and Hezekiah Pratt. On 26 Apr. 1806 Pierce, master of the sloop Richard, swore before Clinton that when he was “approaching Sandy Hook, and was about a quarter mile off the beach and two miles south from the light house” on the evening of 25 Apr., two shots were fired at different times from the British warship Leander causing him to turn his ship around; five minutes later the Leander, which he estimated was about a mile from the Richard, fired another shot killing his brother, John Pierce, after which the Richard proceeded to Sandy Hook. On the same day Hezekiah Pratt, master of the brig Sally, swore before Clinton that as he approached New York harbor on the evening of 25 Apr. “within twenty rods” of the Richard, he observed the shots fired, and saw three warships in the vicinity, of which the two-decker Leander was the largest. He also swore that all the British ships fired at least twenty shots at the Sally, but Pratt went on without stopping; that a sloop of war fired at the Sally when it was “about a quarter of a mile from shore” and after Pierce’s death was said to have occurred; and that about twenty ships were coming into port at the same time and “that upwards of a hundred shots were fired at the said vessels by the said ships of war” (Niles’ Weekly Register 4 [1813]: 75). New York papers reported that the Cambrian, Driver, and Leander were cruising off Sandy Hook and stopping every ship that left the harbor, one of which the Driver held for eight hours. The captain of the Cambrian ordered the American ship Ceres, which he stopped a mile from the New Jersey shore, to lay by until it was given permission to proceed; the Ceres drifted far enough away from the Cambrian that the captain was able to run in to Staten Island and escape the British ships (New York Mercantile Advertiser, 25 Apr. 1806; New-York Commercial Advertiser, 26 Apr. 1806).