The Naval Office at Paris issued a few commissions to privateers. As early as October, 1776, Deane was writing to the Committee of Secret Correspondence for blank commissions. Private as well as public interests were involved in the cruises of Captain Gustavus Conyngham in European waters. Carmichael, a Marylander and an employee in France of Congress and the Commissioners at Paris, asserted that Deane in 1777 intended to equip a vessel in the Mediterranean sea partly on public and partly on private account, that an agent was employed who succeeded in buying a vessel, but that the state of Genoa interposed and stopped the enterprise.[320] Two famous, or better infamous, letters of marque were fitted out at Dunkirk and commissioned by the Naval Office in 1779. They were named the “Black Prince” and the “Black Princess.” Their crews were a malodorous medley, containing “a few Americans, mixed with Irish and English smugglers.” These smugglers had recently broken prison in Dublin, recaptured their smuggling vessel, and escaped to Dunkirk. Should they be recaptured by the English and their identity be discovered, they would be forced to suffer the penalty for smuggling. As they spoke English, it was thought that their past character might be best concealed by giving them an American commission, instead of a French one. These two privateers captured or destroyed upwards of one hundred and twenty sail of the British, and insulted “the coasts of these lords of the ocean.” In the summer of 1780, the “Black Prince” was wrecked on the coast of France, and the commission of the “Black Princess,” upon the request of Vergennes, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, was recalled by Franklin.[321] In 1780 certain American prisoners, who had escaped, fitted out a privateer at Cadiz in Spain and asked Jay, the American minister at Madrid, for a commission. He referred them to Franklin.[322]