stores, for the use of the ministerial army or navy in America:" On the 13th of October two small vessels, one of 10, the other of 14 carriage-guns ; and on the 30th, a ship to mount 20, and another to mount as many as 36 carriage-guns, were ordered to be got ready and equipped as cruisers. On the 2d of November the committee, to which four members had been added, were authorized to draw upon the continental treasury for funds, and to engage officers and seamen to serve on board the four vessels that had been ordered to be fitted out. By way of encouragement to the latter, they were to have half in value of all prizes, being ships of war, and a third of such as were transports. On the 2d of November two battalions of marines were ordered to be raised. On the 11th of December congress ordered to be built 13 ships ; five of 32, five of 28, and three of 24 guns ; all the stores of which, except canvass and powder, could, it was declared, be furnished in the colonies.

On the 14th of June, 1777, congress decreed, that the flag of the United States should be 13 stripes, alternate red and white; and that the union should be 13 stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation. On the 28th of October, 1779, congress established a board of admiralty, to consist of five commissioners ; of whom three were to form a board for despatch of business, and were each to have a salary of 14,000 dollars per annum ; the secretary's salary was to be 10,000. On the 29th of August, 1781, both this board and the naval committee were abolished, and an agent of marine, at a salary of 1500 dollars, with a clerk at 500 dollars, was appointed in lieu of them.

It appears that the Americans, at a very early day, meditated the construction of 74-gun ships. According to a document in the journals of congress, they, in May, 1778, had one upon the stocks at Portsmouth, in New-Hampshire. The plan, on being submitted to a M. Landais, a French naval officer of great experience in the construction of ships, was found fault with ; and, at his suggestion, congress, on the 29th of that month, ordered the ship to be converted into a flush two-decker, to carry twenty-eight 24-pounders on the lower, and twenty-eight 18-pounders on the second deck. This order appears afterwards to have been revoked ; for, according to another entry, the agent of marine was directed, on the 3d of September, 1782, to present that 74-gun. ship, then launched and named the America, to the Chevalier de la Luzerne, far the service of his most christian majesty, in lieu of the Magnifique, of similar force, which had recently been lost on the American coast.

The published accounts are not explicit in reference to the identity of these ships. It is simply from not finding a 56-gun ship in any American navy-list of the time, nor that any second 74 was ordered to be built, and that it is concluded there was but one. At the reduction of Charlestown, in April, 1780, an American ship named the Bricole, alleged to have been pierced

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