For the future use of the fleet the Navy Boards collected in due season provisions and naval stores. In their work as purveyors for the navy a knowledge of the baking of bread and the curing of meats might not prove amiss. The kinds and quantities of provisions which they bought may be judged from an estimate of the supplies that were requisite to equip for sea and for a single cruise the 36-gun frigate “Confederacy.” The names and quantities of the articles needed were as follows: bread, 35,700 lbs.; beef, 15,300 lbs.; pork, 15,300 lbs.; flour, 5,100 lbs.; potatoes, 10,000 lbs.; peas, 80 bus.; mutton, 2,500 lbs.; butter, 637 lbs.; rice, 2,550 lbs.; vinegar, 160 gals.; and rum, 2,791 gals.[137] The Boards’ supplies of naval stores consisted chiefly of canvas, sails, cordage, cables, tar, turpentine, and ship chandlery. The commissioners of each district made some division of their work among themselves. For instance, the special task of Wharton of the Philadelphia Board was the superintending of the accounting and the naval finances of the Middle District. During 1778 Deshon of the Boston Board spent much time in Connecticut attending to the naval business in that state. This had to do chiefly with freeing the “Trumbull” frigate from a sandbar upon which she had grounded. During the same year Vernon was for a time at Providence endeavoring to get to sea the Continental vessels which the British had blockaded in that port. For a part of the year Warren alone attended to the business of the Board at its headquarters at Boston. On August 4, 1778, Congress appropriated $365 to each of the commissioners of the Navy Board at Boston to pay their traveling expenses during the past year, since in the right discharge of their office they were obliged “frequently to visit the different parts of their extensive district.”[138] In the extent of its powers and in the amount of its business the Boston Board exceeded the one at Philadelphia.[139] This was largely owing to the centering of naval affairs in New England after the occupation of Philadelphia in September, 1777; and to the capture or destruction in that year of a large part of the fleet to the southward of New England. After 1776 all the new vessels added in America to the navy, with the exception of two or three, were either purchased or built in New England. The long distance of the Marine Committee from Boston, with the consequent difficulties and delays in communication, made it necessary for the Committee to grant to the Boston Board larger powers than to the Philadelphia Board.