The two prizes which the “Reprisal” carried into Nantes in December, 1776, were taken into the offing of that port and privately sold. The “Reprisal” was quietly refitted, and in February, 1777, she made a cruise off the coast of Spain and returned to L’Orient with the Falmouth packet and four other English vessels. Lord Stormont made vigorous remonstrances. The French government at once ordered the “Reprisal” and her prizes to put to sea within twenty-four hours. Nothing of this sort was done. The “Reprisal” remained in port, on the ground that she had sprung a leak; and her prizes were secretly sold for one-seventh of their value to French merchants, who, for the sake of large profits, eagerly overlooked the irregularity of the transaction.[353] Confident of the accuracy of the cues they were receiving, the Commissioners now fitted out, manned, and officered at Dunkirk the “Surprise,” Captain Gustavus Conyngham, and early in May, 1777, sent her cruising. Within a few days after his leaving Dunkirk, Conyngham returned with the Harwich packet, and one other prize. The storm raised by the British at so open and undoubted a violation of their rights could be pacified only by more rigorous measures. The French government therefore imprisoned Captain Conyngham and his crew, and returned his prizes to their owners.[354] Not at all disconcerted, the Commissioners fitted out a fleet, consisting of the “Reprisal,” “Lexington,” and “Dolphin,” to intercept the Irish linen ships. Captain Wickes was placed at its head as commodore, and was instructed not to return to France unless he found it absolutely necessary. Wickes got to sea during the first of June. Missing the linen ships, he sailed quite around Ireland, and captured or destroyed seventeen or eighteen sail of vessels; he “most effectually alarmed England, prevented the great fair at Chester, occasioned insurance to rise, and even deterred the English merchants from shipping goods in English bottoms at any rate, so that in a few weeks forty sail of French ships were loading in the Thames, on freight, an instance never before known.”[355] The three vessels returned to French ports about July 1.