[Extract]

...I wish I could entertain you with any important intelligence. We have nothing going forward here but fixing out privateers, and condemnation and sale of prizes sent in by them, so many that I am quite lost in my estimate of them, and West India Goods are falling at a great rate. Yesterday arrived a prize taken by a [New] York Privateer with several hundred bags of cotton (a capital article), etc., etc.² While all this is going forward, and whole fleets have been here, and might have been taken by your ships if at sea, I can't sufficiently lament the languor, and seeming inattention to so important a matter. A very fine ship lies at Portsmouth waiting only for guns,³ and I am told there are not yet orders issued for manning those at Newbury Port.⁴ This delay disgusts the officers, and occasions them to repent entering the service....