Another office performed by Franklin, though no special commission for the purpose was ever issued to him by Congress, was that of a Judge in Admiralty. A large quantity of blank commissions for privateers having been sent to him by Congress shortly after his arrival in France, he delivered them to cruisers, fitted out in the ports of France, and manned by smugglers, who knew every creek and cove on the English coast which they had so often visited by night as well, to use a simile employed by one of Franklin's correspondents, as they knew the corners of their beds. The alarm and loss created by these privateers was no mean offset to the destructive efficiency of the British cruisers. One privateer, the _Black Prince_, took in the course of three months more than thirty sail. Such was the apprehension excited by the depredations of American privateers that the seacoasts of England were kept in a constant state of panic, and the premium rate on marine insurance was largely enhanced. As prizes were brought into French harbors, the papers seized in them were examined by Franklin for the purpose of passing upon their legality and the liability of the prizes to sale. It was also under the patronage of Franklin and Deane that the _Reprisal_, the first American ship to fire a gun or capture a prize in European waters, the _Lexington_, a sloop-of-war, of fourteen guns, fitted out by Congress, and commanded by Captain Johnson, the _Dolphin_, a cutter of ten guns, purchased by our envoys from M. de Chaumont, and the _Surprise_, a cutter, commanded by the doughty Captain Gustavus Conyngham, inflicted such injury upon English commerce, including the capture of the Lisbon packet by Captain Wickes, that the French Ministry was compelled to heed the remonstrances of Lord Stormont, the English Minister, so far as to make a deceitful show, in one form or another, of vindicating the outraged neutrality of France. But, when the flimsiest ruses were allowed by the French Ministry to circumvent its interdiction of the abuse of its ports by American ships, with prizes in tow, and Captain Conyngham and his crew, after passing a few days in luxury in a French prison, found means in some unaccountable manner to escape, just as two English men-of-war were coming over to ask that they be delivered to them as pirates, there was little fear anywhere along the French coast, or in the breasts of our envoys, that any sternly vigorous embargo was likely to be laid upon the privateering activities of the United States by anything except the naval energy of England itself.