Corunna, 24th January '76.
[Extract]
I make no doubt Your Lordship will have had particular information of the vessel that was lately stopped by order of this government at San Antonio, near Bilboa, to prove the property of two thousand barrels of gunpowder which she had brought from Holland with intention to put it on board a vessel, supposed to be the Lyon, Capt John Wilson, belonging to Messrs Willing & Morris, merchants in Philadelphia, which vessel remained cruising on the coast of Biscay in expectation of meeting with her. 2 As I have no deputies there, and consequently heard nothing of it but by mere chance, and even then, not until I was convinced, Your Lordship had received more perfect accounts thereof from Madrid, I thought it unnecessary to be troublesome with any thing on that subject hence....
1. Letters and Extracts from the Correspondence of Lord Grantham In Spain, January 1776 to June 1779, Sparks Transcripts, I, 1, HU. Katenkamp was British Consul at La Corufia, Spain.
2. "In September 1775 Willing, Morris & Co entered into an agreement with the Honble Congress by their Committee appointed for that purpose to deliver them Certain Arms & Ammunition they had written for by the Ship Lion Cap Wilson provided she arrived safe with the Goods, on which they received an advance of Eighty thousd Dollars. This Ship arriving in Europe at the time the Foreign Courts were most watchfull to prevent the Exportation of such articles from their Dominions Gap Wilson was disappointed altho he applyed to different Merchants in Spain, France & Holland, and was obliged to return without the Goods bringing back the Specie & bills intended to pay for the purchase." Robert Morris' account of his transactions in behalf of the Secret Committee of the Continental Congress; incomplete, Morris Papers, HUL.
