At first the trade of the colony, which had called into existence a flourishing shipyard at Havelberg, near the junction of the Navel and the Elbe, was fairly satisfactory, and the spirit of the Brandenburg Navy was raised by the successful operations of a couple of its frigates against French merchantmen, but in 1697 the Company fell upon evil days. It suffered pecuniary loss, both through the capture of some of its ships by the French and through the peculations of several officials, whose multiple dishonesty hints at a scandalous laxity of control. The invaluable Raule, too, fell into disfavour, and spent four years in gaol, though he was reinstated in his position on being liberated. At last the Company was no longer able to send out ships of its own, and for eight years, during the War of the Spanish Succession, the garrison of Gross-Friedrichsburg was left entirely to itself. For a considerable portion of that time five large Brandenburg ships of war were rotting in the harbours of Emden and Hamburg, when they might have been much more profitably employed in attempting to keep up communications with the perishing colonists. When at last reliefs reached Gross-Friedrichsburg only seven men out of an original force of 1,700 were fit for duty. What little credit attaches to the last days of the first German colony is the due of Jan Cuny, a native chief, who had placed himself under Brandenburg protection, apparently for the purpose of obtaining support against the English and Dutch settlements of the vicinity, with both of which he was at feud. It is characteristic of the period that, while Prussians were fighting shoulder to shoulder with English and Dutch on the continent of Europe, they were in open conflict with them on the West Coast of Africa. Frederick I. at one time thought it necessary to protest, through his Minister at London, against the difficulties which the English were causing him on the Gold Coast. All the trouble seems to have arisen out of the demand made by a Dutch official at Axim for the surrender of a female relative of Cuny whom he claimed as a slave. Jan was evidently a man of considerable parts. He led his army with great discretion and resourcefulness, and no doubt the Prussians at Gross-Friedrichsburg thought it to their advantage to be on good terms with so formidable a warrior, especially as he was the sworn foe of their jealous European neighbours. At any rate, the relations between Cuny and the fort became both cordial and confiding, and when the last Governor of Gross-Friedrichsburg, Du Bois, discouraged by the indifference and neglect of the home authorities, sailed for Emden to enter remonstrances, he entrusted the protection of the colony to his black ally.