Two rich Letters of Marque were taken off the coast of Scotland, and Captain Landais took upon himself, even under my very nose, and without my knowledge, to order them to Bergen, in Norway, where they were given up to the English.—Paul Jones to the Board of Admiralty.
Three of their prizes sent into Bergen, in Norway, were, at the instance of the British minister, seized by order of the court of Denmark, and delivered up to him.—Letter from Dr. Franklin to Samuel Huntington, Esq. President of Congress.
The following letter from Dr. Franklin to Paul Jones, shows the value of those prizes, taken and delivered up as above. There can be no doubt that Mr. Herbert was sent in one of the above prizes, as the next entry in his journal is from Bergen, in Norway.
Havre, July 21st, 1785.
The Hon. Paul Jones.
Dear Sir,—The offer of which you desire I would give you the particulars, was made to me by M. le Baron de Waltersdorff, in behalf of His Majesty the King of Denmark, by whose ministers he said he was authorised to make it. It was to give the sum of ten thousand pounds sterling, as a compensation for having delivered up the prizes to the English. I did not accept it, conceiving it much too small a sum, they having been valued to me at sixty thousand pounds. I wrote to Mr. Hodgson, an insurer in London, requesting he would procure information of the sums insured on those Canada ships. His answer was, that he could find no traces of such insurance, and he believed none was made, for the government, on whose account they were said to be loaded with military stores, never insured.—But, by the best judgment he could make, he thought they might be worth about sixteen or eighteen thousand pounds each.
By the following letter it will be seen that Bergen was one of the places designated by Dr. Franklin, for sending prizes to.