The headquarters of the Naval Office were of course situated at Paris, several hundred miles from the ports frequented by the Continental vessels. This was a great disadvantage, as it caused delays in communicating with the naval officers and naval agents, besides other inconveniences. The Office gave its orders as a rule by letter, but now and then when its officers and agents visited Paris, it communicated with them by word of mouth. Its official correspondence with the home government was carried on almost exclusively with the “Foreign Office” at Philadelphia—that is, at first with the Committee of Secret Correspondence, then with the Committee of Foreign Affairs, and finally with the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. A few letters passed between the Naval Office at Paris and the Naval Department in America. The secretary and the clerks, first of the Commissioners, and later of the Minister at the Court of France, assisted in transacting the naval business. The American representatives at Paris employed agents in a number of the chief Atlantic ports of France to transact their naval and commercial business. The principal agencies were at Nantes, L’Orient, Bordeaux, Brest, and Dunkirk. There were also agencies at Bilbao, and Coruña, Spain; and in Holland. It is difficult to separate the naval and commercial duties of these agencies, as they were vested in the same men. The whole subject is exceedingly complicated. For transacting naval business, Nantes was the most important agency, although L’Orient was not far behind it. At Nantes in 1777 within a comparatively short period of time one finds Thomas Morris, a half-brother of Robert Morris, William Lee, a brother of Richard Henry Lee, Jonathan Williams, a nephew of Franklin, John Ross, a Philadelphia merchant, and a certain German merchant by the name of Schweighauser exercising similar duties. William Lee was for a time commercial agent for all of France, and his authority of course came in contact with that of the Commissioners at Paris.[316] Such divisions and duplications of powers resulted in much contention, misunderstanding, and jealousy. John Adams tells us that when he arrived in France in the spring of 1778 he found in some places two or three persons claiming the character of American agents; and that at one port, three agents had been appointed, one by the Commissioners at Paris, another by the commercial agent of France, and a third by the Commercial Committee of Congress. “We have such abuses and irregularities every day occurring as are very alarming. Agents of various sorts are drawing bills upon us, and the commanders of vessels of war are drawing upon us for expenses and supplies which we never ordered.” Moved by the reformatory zeal that so often characterizes the new appointee to public office, Adams attempted to reduce the business of Congress in France to some system.[317]