The French army was an aid to our success; the French navy was a necessity. The result completely filled the dictum of Washington, who foresaw by a hundred years that which is to-day an axiom and one particularly applicable to our own country: “In any operation and under all circumstances, a decisive naval superiority is to be considered a fundamental principle and the basis upon which every hope of success must ultimately depend.”[10] He would have made a great admiral, a career he narrowly escaped when it was proposed that he should go as midshipman under Admiral Vernon. The Fates fortunately decreed otherwise. The operations of the Continental navy were now confined to very few ships. The _Alliance_, under Captain Barry, had left Boston February 11, 1781, carrying Colonel John Laurens and Thomas Paine. The former bore a letter which, addressed by Washington to Laurens, was to be shown Vergennes, putting strongly the necessity of money and ships, and giving the whole logic of the situation in the sentence: “Indeed, it is not to be conceived how [the British] could subsist a large force in this country if we had the command of the seas to interrupt the regular transmission of supplies from Europe.” The _Alliance_ was unhappy in the character of her crew, which illustrated the exigencies to which we were now driven. A large number were British prisoners. These on the return voyage formed a conspiracy to carry the ship to Ireland, in the suppression of which Barry exhibited courage and qualities for command of a high order. On the way he captured two British cruisers, of 16 and 14 guns, the smaller of which was made a cartel to carry his prisoners, now about 250, into Halifax. The larger was retaken by a squadron near Cape Cod. The _Marquis de Lafayette_, a French privateer which had left France at the same time as the _Alliance_, with a valuable cargo of military stores, suffered the same fate. The _Deane_, _Confederacy_, and _Saratoga_ cruised this year in the West Indies, with small fortune, which was turned into very bad, by the capture of the _Confederacy_ by a British squadron on April 15th. The _Trumbull_, at sea on her first cruise, with a mixed crew of wretched quality, was dismasted in a gale and was taken on August 8th by the _Iris_ and the _General Monk_, both of which were captured American ships taken into the British service, one, as just said, being the _Hancock_, and the latter a privateer, the _General Washington_. The _Iris_, as but just mentioned above, was taken by the French only a month later and the _General Monk_ on April 7th of the next year by the _Hyder Ally_, under Captain Joshua Barney, in one of the notable actions of the war.