[580] New York Historical Society Collections, Deane Papers, IV, 450, 468, 478, 519; Wharton, Diplomatic Correspondence, IV, 546-47, note. [581] Pennsylvania Packet, March 5, May 31, and June 4, 1782. The issue of June 4 contains a letter of Gillon to Governor Mathewes of South Carolina, dated May 15, 1782, containing an account of the expedition; Gibbes, Documentary History of American Revolution, 1776-1782, 170. [582] Connecticut Gazette, June 14, 1782. [583] Clowes’s Royal Navy, IV, 91. [584] Journals of South Carolina House of Representatives, March 10, 1783. [585] McCrady, South Carolina in Revolution, 1775-1780, 219. [586] Cooper, Statutes of South Carolina, V, December 21, 1814. [587] Conversations with Hon. J. T. Gantt, Secretary of State of South Carolina. CHAPTER XVI THE MINOR NAVIES OF THE SOUTHERN STATES Naval administration in Maryland was vested in the Committee of Safety until March 22, 1777, when it passed to the Governor and Council, the executive under the first state constitution of Maryland. The Committee was given a free hand in its control of the navy. The Provincial Convention empowered it to fix the pay of officers and seamen, and to appoint the commanders of the smaller naval vessels. The Convention, however, established the pay of marines, which was the same as that of the state troops; and it decided that the uniform of the marines should be a blue hunting shirt.[588] The first naval work of the Committee of Safety was the fitting and arming, in February and March, 1776, of the ship “Defence,” twenty-two 6-pounders, Captain James Nicholson, the chief vessel in the Maryland navy. In March the schooner “Resolution” was purchased as a tender for the “Defence.” The Committee of Safety, which held its meetings in Annapolis was early in 1776 assisted in its work at Baltimore, the chief port of the state, by the Baltimore Committee of Observation; and, later in the year, by Jesse Hollingsworth, who was appointed naval agent for Baltimore.