The British officers were treating the captives they had taken from the Americans, with the greatest brutality. They had driven one hundred prisoners into the coal mines of Cape Breton, where they were forced to labor like slaves. This procedure greatly outraged Captain Jones’s sense of humanity and justice. He suggested that an expedition should be fitted out for their release; and also, as far as possible, to destroy England’s coal fleet and her fishing fleet. The plan was approved of. For the accomplishment of this important enterprise he was allowed to fit out two vessels, the Alfred and the Providence. The whole burden and responsibility of the preparations rested upon him. He took command of the Alfred, committing the Providence to Captain Hacker. He found but thirty men on board the Alfred, and with great difficulty succeeded in enlisting thirty more. When the Alfred entered the harbor at Newport from Philadelphia, a few weeks before, she had two hundred and thirty-five men on her muster-roll. Captain Jones, in a letter to Hon. Robert Morris, explained the cause of this singular desertion, and proposed a remedy. “It seems to me,” he writes, “that the privateers entice the men away as fast as they receive their month’s pay. It is to the last degree distressing to contemplate the state and establishment of our navy. The common class of mankind are animated by no nobler principle than that of self-interest. This, and this alone, determines all adventurers in privateers; the owners, as well as those whom they employ. “And while this is the case, unless the private emolument of individuals _in our navy_ is made superior to that in _privateers_, it never can become respectable; it never will become formidable. And without a respectable navy, alas, America! In the present critical situation of affairs, human wisdom can suggest no more than one infallible expedient: enlist the seamen during pleasure, and _give them all the prizes_. “What is the paltry emolument of two-thirds of prizes to this vast continent.[A] If so poor a resource is essential to its independency, we are, in sober sadness, involved in a woful predicament, and our ruin is fast approaching. The situation of America is new in the annals of mankind. Her affairs cry haste; and speed must answer them. Trifles therefore ought to be wholly disregarded, as being, in the old vulgar proverb, ‘penny wise and pound foolish.’ ----- Footnote A: Congress appropriated two-thirds of all prizes to the Government, leaving but one-third to be divided among the captors. ----- “If our enemies, with the best established and most formidable navy in the universe, have found it expedient to assign all prizes to the captors, how much more is such policy essential to our infant fleet? But I need use no arguments to convince you of the necessity of making our navy equal, if not superior to theirs.”