The Naval Office at Paris served as a channel for the communication of foreign naval intelligence; it also proposed to Congress several important naval plans. John Adams, while Commissioner, and later while on a diplomatic mission in Holland, wrote long letters to Congress on the armament of the foreign navies, the movements of the British, French, and Spanish fleets, and the captures made by these fleets. In November, 1776, Silas Deane, always fertile in schemes, proposed to the Committee of Secret Correspondence the sending of frigates against the Newfoundland fisheries; after destroying these, the frigates were to sail for the Baltic and cruise after the enemy’s ships bound for Russia. In the same letter he proposed a second project. A number of frigates with merchantmen under their convoy should be loaded with tobacco, rice, wheat, and other colonial products, and should sail for Bordeaux. After unloading their cargoes and refreshing their crews the frigates should strike a blow on the British coast which would “alarm and weaken Great Britain most effectually. The city of Glasgow might at any hour be destroyed by a single frigate capable of landing two hundred men.” After their descent on England the frigates should sail northward and intercept the Baltic ships, or else return to France and wait for a good opportunity to strike a second blow. Ships engaging in such expeditions could obtain any number of recruits in France. By issuing commissions, individuals would “join you in the adventure under your flag, with stout frigates, several of which are now building absolutely with the design, viz., the hopes of getting into the service of the United States of North America.”[342] Deane’s letters at this time are somewhat extravagant, nor are they always based on an accurate knowledge of the facts. “Would it not be well,” he asks, “to purchase at Leghorn five or six stout Frigates, which might at once transport some companies of Swiss and a quantity of stores and the whole be defended by the Swiss soldiers on their passage?”[343]