Tineriefe1 July 14 78
Lagoanere & Co Sirs
This Serves to Inform you that I touch’d here after a long Cruise of 42 days during which I made but one prize which if she gets to American will be a good one, being about 200 tons of Bale Goods.2 your Friends messs. Cassalon & Co-3 very Kindly furnished me with every thing I wanted, & I Hold my self much Indebted to you for Introducing me to the Acquaintance of these worthy Gentlemen,
for amount of there Acct. being 835 Drs. 2 Rs. 30 ms I have takin the liberty to value on you in my bill [to] their favour,4 to which I pray your Usual Care & charge to [ye.?] Revenge,5 One of the prizes which I orderd for America I here is put Into palina in Distress but Hope to send her forward directly,6 I purpose (PG)7 to leave this tomorrow & hope to be more lucky this Cruise; Should any letters come to your Hands for me please to Keep them by you, when you Write me I pray you’ll give me all the Information you can abot. the Brigg at St. Sabastians, as I suppose by this they have Come to some determination about her.8
LB, UkLPR, H.C.A. 32/441/7, pt. 1.
1. That is, Tenerife, Canary Is., Spain.
2. The prize, the Swedish brig Henrica Sophia, Peter Heldt, master, was recaptured off Cape Cod before arriving at Newburyport, Massachusetts Letters and Papers of Gustavus Conyngham, 149–50, insert opposite p. 152.
3. Cassalon & Co. was a merchant firm in Tenerife.
4. The abbreviations, in order, stand for Spanish dollars, reales, and maravedies, a copper coin.
5. That is, the Continental cutter that Conyngham commanded.
6. As seen in the note at Conyngham to Jackson, Tracy & Tracy, 2 July, above, the prize, Countess of Morton, was at La Palma, but was not “in Distress.”
7. That is, “please God.”
8. French brig Gracieux, Emanuel de Tournois, master, captured by Revenge on 21 Dec. 1777. Gracieux was carrying a load of woolens from England to Spain. On its arrival at San Sebastián, the Spanish officials at that port ordered the vessel seized and the prize crew arrested. The Court of Spain angrily protested the capture and the American Commissioners in France ordered Conyngham to drop his claim. Letters and Papers of Gustavus Conyngham, 4–5; Silas Deane to Captain Gustavus Conyngham, 21 Jan. 1778, NDAR 11: 926–28.
