In January, 1780, Congress on the recommendation of the Board of Admiralty passed a resolution which was no doubt in harmony with administrative economy and thrift, but which pressed hard upon many naval officers. The pay of all officers in the navy not in actual service was at once to cease. Their commissions were to be deposited with the most convenient Navy Board, until the officers should be again called into service; each officer was to retain his rank.[243] This was merely a courteous way of disestablishing the larger part of the navy. Owing to the capture and destruction of many Continental vessels, most of the naval officers were not in actual service. The number of commissioned officers in actual service in both navy and marine corps at this time was about twenty. It is clear that the Continental Congress was unfriendly to the theory that an employee of a government has a vested right in his office. On July 11, 1780, naval salaries, subsistence money, and bounties were ordered to be paid in specie; forty Continental dollars were considered equal to one of specie. On the same day, in order that the depleted crews might perchance be recruited, Congress voted a bounty of twenty dollars to able, and ten dollars to ordinary seamen who should enlist in the navy for twelve months.[244] On August 7 it provided that officers who had served aboard vessels of twenty guns or upwards, and who should afterwards be detailed to vessels of less armament, should suffer no diminution in pay.[245] These provisions all indicate a declining government and navy. On February 8, 1780, the Board of Admiralty secured the re-enaction of the resolutions of May 6, 1778, concerning the holding of courts of enquiry and courts-martial.[246] The most important provision of these resolutions, it is recalled, lessened the requirements for the membership of courts-martial as fixed by Adams’s rules. On the partial disestablishment of the navy in January it became increasingly difficult to assemble courts-martial composed entirely of naval officers. The only naval captain cashiered by a court-martial held under the direction of the Board of Admiralty was the eccentric Peter Landais.[247] On May 4, 1780, the Board of Admiralty reported and Congress adopted the following device for a seal: “The arms, thirteen bars mutually supporting each other, alternate red and white, in a blue field, and surmounted by an anchor proper. The crest a ship under sail. The motto, sustentans et sustentatus. Legend, U. S. A. Sigil. Naval.”[248] The anchor and ship under sail are still a part of the seal of the Department of the Navy. Instead of the arms, motto, and former legend, there now appear an eagle with outstretched wings, and the words “Navy Department, United States of America.”