Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

[392] with the English Foreign Office, against the Confederates being permitted to have ‘stationed agents,’ at Liverpool, and elsewhere in the British dominions, conducting a ‘Naval Bureau.’ Had he forgotten the ‘Naval Bureau’ which was conducted in France, by Dr. Franklin and Silas Deane, who were ‘stationed agents’ of the Colonies? How they built, and purchased, and equipped, and commissioned ships, all in neutral territory; even filling up blank commissions sent out to them by the Congress for the purpose?

But to continue with our precedents. The career of the Surprise was not a very long one. Having carried some prizes into a French port, in violation of a treaty then existing between France and Great Britain, providing that neither should permit the enemies of the other to bring their prizes into her ports, she was seized by the French authorities, and we hear no more of her. But we do hear more, and that immediately, from the Naval Bureau in Paris, under the guidance of Dr. Franklin and Silas Deane. As soon as the seizure of the Surprise became known to the Commissioners, they dispatched one of their agents, a Mr. Hodge, to Dunkirk, where he purchased another cutter, which was fitted with all dispatch, as a cruiser, as the Surprise had been. This second vessel was called the Revenge, and ‘Captain Conyngham and his people,’ to use the words of the historian, were transferred to her. A new commission was given to Conyngham, dated on the 2d of May, 1777, filled up, as before, by the Commissioners, and he soon afterward proceeded to sea under it.

It will be seen with what indulgence, and even connivance the Commissioners were treated by the French authorities. The seizure of the Surprise was a mere blind, intended to satisfy England. The ship herself was suffered to pass out of view, but another ship was permitted to be equipped in her stead, and the officers and crew of the old ship were transferred to the new one, with little or no disguise, and the latter was suffered to depart on a cruise without molestation. Here was another ship, which had never been in any port of the Colonies, and which, according to Mr. Seward's vocabulary, was a ‘pirate.’ Let us see what she did. ‘The Revenge,’ continues the historian, ‘proved exceedingly successful, making prizes ’