A pamphlet has been circulated here under the title of "CommonSense," which was sent hither from America. It is written with great virulence against the English administration; and its design is to stir up the colonists to assert their independency on the mother country. There are many false assertions in it, one of which Admiral Gayton had thought proper to contradict in the Jamaica Gazette, in the following words:
I have seen a pamphlet published in Philadelphia, under the title of Common Sense, wherein the Author says, that 40 years ago there were 70 and 80 gun ships built in New England: In answer to which I do declare, that, at that very period of time I was in New England, a midshipman on board his Majesty's ship Squirrel, with the late Sir Peter Warren, and then there never had been a man of war built of any kind. In 1747 (after the reduction of Louisburgh) there was a ship of 44 guns ordered to be built at Piscataqua by one Mr. Messervey, she was called the America, and sailed for England the following year; when she came home, she was found so bad, that she never was commissioned again. There was afterwards another ship of 20 guns built at Boston, by Mr. Benjamin Hollwell, which was called the Boston, she run but a short time before she was condemned, and those were the only two ships of war ever built in America; therefore I thought it my duty to publish this, to undeceive the Public in general, to shew that what the Author has set forth is an absolute falsity.
Clark Gayton.
1. London Chronicle, August 27 to August 29, 1776.
