Another mystery of the voyage of this thirty-two gun frigate of the royal navy is her employment as a mere packet, carrying cash and bullion for the benefit of private individuals. The officer responsible for sending the _Lutine_ on this unusual errand was Admiral Lord Duncan who "received a pressing invitation from some merchants to convey a quantity of bullion." It was his first intention to dispatch a cutter, but the treasure given in his care was swelled by larger amounts until its total value was £1,175,000 or more than five and a half million dollars. The admiral thereupon discarded the cutter and selected instead the swift and staunch _Lutine_ frigate, one of the best vessels of his fleet. On October 9, he wrote to the Admiralty from on board his flagship, the _Kent_, in Yarmouth Roads: "The merchants interested in making remittances to the continent for the support of their credit, having made application to me for a King's ship to carry over a considerable sum of money, on account of there being no Packet for that purpose, I have complied with their request, and ordered the _Lutine_ to Cuxhaven with the same, together with the mails lying there for want of conveyance; directing Captain Skynner to proceed to Stromness immediately after doing so, to take under his protection the Hudson's Bay's ships and see them in safety to the Nore." When this letter was written, the _Lutine_ had already sailed, and before Lord Duncan's communication reached the Lords of the Admiralty, the splendid treasure laden frigate had laid her bones on the sand banks of Holland. Admiral Duncan appears to have escaped all censure for this disaster which followed his action taken without consultation and without waiting for the approval of his superiors. The merchants of London were powerful enough to command the services of the navy, and English credit was needed on the continent to buttress English arms and statesmanship. With her millions of treasure and hundreds of lives, the _Lutine_ drove straight toward as fatal a coast to shipping as can be found anywhere in the world. It is a coast which is neither sea nor land, strewn with wrecks, and with somber memories even more tragic. Where is now the entrance of the Zuyder Zee was unbroken terra firma until the thirteenth century when a terrible hurricane piled the North Sea through the isthmus separating it from the large lake called Vlies by the natives. A wide channel was cut by this inroad, and in 1287 the North Sea scoured for itself a second inlet at the cost of a hundred thousand human lives. Ever since then, the channels have been multiplying and shifting until what was once the coast line has become a maze of islands and sand-banks, the Texel, Vlieland, Terschelling, Ameland, and hundreds of lesser ones which confuse even the mariners born and bred among them.