The Board of Admiralty laid the proceedings of this court-martial before Congress in July, 1781, but owing to the confusion of the naval business at this time, and to the carelessness of Congress, no action was taken on them. When John Brown, the naval agent of the Agent of Marine, reached Boston, towards the end of 1781, he found the three men in prison, waiting the execution of their sentences, and “perishing with cold for want of Cloathing.” The fate of the three men is best told in Brown’s words: “Under these circumstances it was the opinion of the Board (and I agreed with them) that as the proceedings had lain so long before Congress without anything being done, and it being uncertain when they would act upon them, to save expence it was best to dispose of the Men in the best manner we could. Accordingly the two who were sentenced to be whipped were put on board the Deane, the other was sold by the Sheriff to pay his bill of fees, keeping, &c., and with the surplus of the money he procured us three good seamen for the Deane. My motive for concurring in this proceeding was to save expence and preserve the public Money in my hands for more Material purposes.”[289] In December, 1781, and January, 1782, Congress passed an ordinance, “in pursuance of the powers delegated by the Confederation,” which codified in great part the previous legislation on captures and condemnation of prizes, recaptures and salvage, contraband, and the sharing of prizes between the captors and the government and between the captors themselves. Several changes were made in previous resolutions, and a few new ones were added. On their receiving a reasonable salvage, the recaptors of negroes, mulattoes, Indians, and indented servants, were to return all such property to its owners. The new ordinance specified in some detail the various forms of property which were subject to capture. It contained a revised list of articles of contraband. It declared that the rules of decision in the several admiralty courts should be “the resolutions and ordinances of the United States in Congress assembled, public treaties when declared to be so by an act of Congress, and the law of nations, according to the general usages of Europe;” public treaties were given precedence over the two other classes of rules.[290] This ordinance went into operation on February 1, 1782. Its importance is diminished by reason of its being in force during only the last year of the war, when the naval activities of the American fleets had decreased.