2. Hacker, on January 20, had been transferred from the brig Cabot to command of the fleet tender, the sloop Fly.

3. That this letter was addressed to Lieutenant Hinman and the other two officers, who had sailed from New London on January 19 in the sloop Lizard with eighty-two Connecticut enlisted men for the fleet, is a logical conjecture. Apparently the Lizard had rough sailing and put into an inlet on the New Jersey coast earlier in February. Word was then sent to Hopkins of their whereabouts, and the sloop Fly was dispatched down the bay to pick them up for the fleet. They probably did not arrive until the fleet had anchored within Cape Henlopen on February 13. The men were distributed among the various vessels. Of the three officers, Lieutenant Jonathan Maltbie was attached to the Alfred immediately upon his arrival, and Hinman was sent to the Cabot to succeed Hacker as first lieutenant. The immediate disposition of the third officer, David Phipps, master, is not in evidence.