In the spring of 1777 the Commissioners received orders from Congress to build six vessels of war; but before this, they had on their own responsibility contracted with “one of the ablest sea officers of France, skilled in all the arts relating to the marine,” who had offered “his services to our States, with the permission of the minister,” to “superintend the building of two ships of war, of a particular construction, which, though not of half the cost, shall be superior in force and utility to ships of sixty-four guns.” This officer had already built a vessel of this type for the King of France which the Commissioners were told “exceeds everything in swift sailing.”[325] Only one of these frigates, which was named the “Indian,” was placed upon the stocks, and this one at Amsterdam. To conceal its ownership and destination it was built in the name of a private individual. The Commissioners wrote in the fall of 1777, when the ship was almost finished, that it was a large frigate and was supposed to equal a ship of the line, as it would carry thirty 24-pounders on one deck. The ship did not get to sea under Continental colors. Owing to the many difficulties of equipping and manning so large a ship in a neutral port, and to the lack of money necessary for such work, the Commissioners sold it to the King of France for a sum equal to that which they had expended upon it; the King at the same time agreed to pension well the officer who had built it.[326] With the sale of this frigate the work of the Naval Office at Paris in naval construction came to a close. The “Indian” was finally rented to the state of South Carolina. In 1779 and 1780 the French government loaned several vessels to the Naval Office.