About a month ago, Capt. [Nicholas] Biddle, of the Andrew Doria, sailed from this port, and the next day he took a sloop from the West-Indies, which was yesterday condemned as a lawful prize. Ten days after, near the banks of Newfoundland, at daylight, he saw two ships, and in an hour was in possession of them, without firing even a musket. They had each about one hundred soldiers on board, and were part of a fleet of thirty-three sail that left Scotland the third of April, with three thousand troops on board, bound for Boston. Capt. Biddle took out of them four land officers, the masters, mates, and crews, all their arms, ammunition, &c. and removed all the soldiers out of one ship into the other, so that in one ship were all the soldiers, and in the other the officers and their ladies. He was obliged to keep them with him for thirteen days, on account of contrary winds.
On the fourteenth day, at four in the morning, five sail of vessels gave him chace, upon which he ordered the ships to steer different courses, himself keeping near to the heaviest sailor, but in about an hour a squall of rain soon arose and hid them from him; the ship with the soldiers on board altered her course, and by eleven o'clock was out of sight, the weather then clear. Soon after the vessels altered their course, as he did his, in order to avoid them. At six o'clock he saw another vessel, right before, and steering towards him, when he again altered his course, and at eight o'clock (dark cloudy weather) he was about three leagues from the nearest of the vessels.
Yesterday Captain Whipple sailed on a cruize. And upon the Cerberus appearing in sight, Capt. Biddle immediately went on board and sailed, as also did the Providence sloop and two gallies, to the assistance of Capt. Whipple but wind and tide being against them, before they got within a league of Whipple (who lay to in order to find the force of the enemy) the man of war gave him a broadside and then stood off. Captain Whipple came in, the ship being of much superior force to him.
