The Virginia Gazette

A letter from a gentleman in New England, to his friend in this town, mentions, that the valuable prize lately sent into Newbury Port proves to be a French brigantine, with a French Captain and crew, loaded at Yarmouth for Genoa and Leghorn, and had on board 250 bales of dry goods, and 30 tuns of lead, and supposed to be the richest prize brought into America since the commencement of the war. The Captain of her declares, that many other French vessels have been loaded in England by the British merchants, in hopes thereby of cloaking their property from American cruisers. This scheme hitherto succeeded well for them, as it appears that many of the New England privateers have lately boarded such French vessels, which they did not conceive themselves at liberty to make prize of, having French crews and papers. The same letter mentions another prize from London being brought into New England, on board of which was found concealed a letter to a house in Ireland, which confirms the report of the French Captain, advising that the merchants had adopted the scheme of shipping their goods in foreign bottoms, to elude the Americans, being determined to haul up their own vessels. It is well known how the British men of war and privateers served the Dutch in the late war, when employed as carriers for the French; and with how little ceremony they condemned both vessels and cargoes, as legal prizes, upon scarcely any other evidence than their being loaded in French ports. To what wretched shifts are the haughty lords of the ocean already reduced, if necessitated to dispense with the boasted act of navigation, the great palladium of their commerce, and to copy after examples they so loudly condemned in others. It is hoped American cruisers will attend to this important discovery, and trace an insidious enemy through all their doublings.