The Marine Committee and its principal agents employed many minor agents. One illustration, taken from the work of the Navy Boards as purveyors of the navy, will suffice to show the subordinate character of the services which these minor agents rendered. It is recorded that the Navy Board at Boston had in its employ in New Hampshire “a contractor of beef for the navy,” who in turn had in his employ a single drover, that by September, 1779, had purchased more than one thousand head of cattle for the use of the Navy Board at Boston.[130] FOOTNOTES: [88] See Chapter XVII, The Minor Navies of the Northern States. [89] Force, American Archives, 4th, III, 231; Sparks, American Biography, 2nd, IX, 314-15. [90] Journals of Continental Congress, October 3, 1775; Force, American Archives 4th, III, 1888-91; Works of John Adams, II, 462. [91] Works of John Adams, II, 463-4. [92] Journals of Continental Congress, October 16, November 16, 1775. [93] Gammell, Life of Samuel Ward, in Sparks’s American Biography, 2nd, IX, 316. [94] Journals of Continental Congress, December 9, 1775. [95] Ibid., December 11, 1775. [96] Ibid., December 13, 1775. [97] Journals of Continental Congress, December 14, 1775. [98] Journals of Continental Congress. January 25, September 19, 1776. See Ford’s new edition of the Journals. [99] The Secretary of the Marine Committee was John Brown. [100] Journals of Continental Congress, June 6, 1777. [101] Ibid., June 16, 1778. [102] Ibid., January 27, 1780. [103] Journals of Continental Congress, December 27, 1777. [104] Lee, however, signed a letter as chairman in March, 1779. Relative to Samuel Adams’s work in the Marine Committee, these words of his biographer possess interest: “Upon his arrival in Congress [May 21, 1778], he was added to the Marine Committee, of which important Board he was made chairman, and continued to direct its duties, for the next two years. In this arduous position, judged from the great number of reports and the multiplicity of business submitted to it, Adams might fairly have claimed exemption from all other employments.”—Wells, Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, III, 13. Mr. Wells exaggerates the length of the naval services of Adams, who left Philadelphia about June 20, 1779; whereupon William Whipple succeeded him as chairman of the Marine Committee. [105] New Hampshire Gazette, June 1, 1776. [106] Probably put upon the stocks at Salisbury and completed at Newburyport. [107] Edward Field, State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, II, 423. [108] Staples, Annals of Providence, 267-8; Marine Committee Letter Book, Marine Committee to Stephen Hopkins, and Marine Committee to Committee for Building the Continental Frigates at Providence, October 9, 1776. [109] Colonial Records of Connecticut, XV, 526. [110] Records of State of Connecticut, I, 177. [111] Force, American Archives, 5th, II, 350, 636, 989; III, 827.