In May, 1777, the recommendations made by Deane in November, 1776, were in substance repeated by the Commissioners at Paris to the Committee of Foreign Affairs. These new recommendations were in all probability drafted by Deane. The Commissioners thought that a blow might be struck on the coast of England which would “alarm and shake Great Britain, and its credit, to the center.” The burning and plundering of Liverpool or Glasgow would do more essential service to the Colonies than a million of treasure and blood spent in America. It would raise our reputation to the highest pitch, and lessen in the same degree that of our enemy. The Commissioners were confident that the plan was practicable, and could be carried out with very little danger. They also recommended the sending of two or three Continental frigates with some small cruisers into the German ocean, where, about the middle of August, they might seize the greater part of the enemy’s Baltic and northern trade. One frigate, they said, would be sufficient to destroy the “Greenland whale fishery, or take the Hudson Bay ships returning.”[344] In the fall of 1778 the Commissioners called the attention of both the Committee of Foreign Affairs and the French Minister of Marine to the ease with which a single frigate or privateer of twenty or twenty-four guns could capture the valuable whale fishery which the English maintained off the coast of Brazil. The seventeen vessels employed in this industry were manned and officered almost entirely by Americans belonging to Nantucket and Cape Cod. These men had been captured by Great Britain, and having been given their choice of entering the British naval service or the whale fishing industry, had chosen the latter. By their recapture four hundred and fifty of the best kind of American seamen would be added to the Continental service, and moreover the cargoes of oil which would be taken were very valuable.[345]