Bordeaux 16 June 1778
Honble. Sirs
I had the Honor to write you the 13. 13 & 14th Instant1— Mr Emery receiv’d letters from Capt. Cunningham at Corronha advising their Arrival at that Port from Cadiz having made four Prizes on the passage—2 We have it reported the Boston fell in with two privateers one of eighteen Guns she took the other got off,3 I cannot trace it so as give implicite faith
The Jersey Privateers stil continue upon the Coast of Spain they have taken a vessel belonging to Bayonne haveg Tobacco on board from the Cape4 & a small schooner with eighty hhds from Edenton.5
Letters from Lisbon mention the arrival of a Vessel at that Port from the Western Islands that fell in wth the Fleet under Comte D’Estaing near to Tercera the 23 may—6 Captain de Siau is come down a suitable vessel is purchased to mount 24 Nine pounders two hundred & forty men and a small tender is on the Stocks which together are to be compleatly equipt and at Sea by the 20th July.7 I am with due respect [&c.]
John Bondfield
L, PPamP, Benjamin Franklin Papers, vol. 10, fol. 39. Addressed: “The Honble. Benj. Franklin/Arthur Lee. John Adams Esqr/Commissioners from Congress/at Paris.” Docketed: “Mr Bondfield 16 June 1778.”
1. For Bondfield’s two letters of 13 June, see Adams Papers, 6: 204 and Benjamin Franklin Papers, 26: 615–16; for that of the 14th, see ibid, p. 617.
2. The prizes were the brigs Carbonnere, Countess of Morton, Maria, and Tapley. For more information on these prizes, see the notes at NDAR 12: 703. John Emery was an American merchant at Bilbao, Spain.
3. This report was erroneous.
4. This was probably the capture reported in Williamson’s Liverpool Advertiser and Mercantile Chronicle, 26 June, below.
5. On 23 June, Bondfield reported to the commissioners that nine American seamen of the schooner from Edenton had been landed on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and had arrived in Bordeaux. Adams Papers 6: 232.
6. That is, Terceira, an island in the Azores.
7. This was probably the French privateer ship Vengeance, Capt. Chevalier de Montazeau. The Bordeaux merchant firm of Basmarein & Raimbaux, which had had dealings with the commissioners, sponsored this venture. For more on Vengeance, which sailed in August and on its voyage captured three prizes, and its tender Rangler, Lt. James Barnett, commander, see Francis Montresor to Benjamin Franklin, 23 June 1778, Benjamin Franklin Papers, 26: 677–78 and n.
