During the incumbency of the Marine Committee a number of interesting and important naval trials were held. Captain Thomas Thompson in 1778 and Captain Dudley Saltonstall in 1779 were broken by courts-martial. Other captains who lost their vessels were tried, but escaped so severe a punishment. The cases growing out of Commodore Hopkins’s expedition to New Providence, his engagement with the “Glasgow,” and the immediately succeeding events of his fleet in the spring of 1776 deserve more extended notice. During the summer of 1776 the Marine Committee ordered Commodore Hopkins and Captains Dudley Saltonstall and Abraham Whipple to leave the fleet, which was then stationed in Rhode Island, and to come to Philadelphia for trial. After calling before it the inferior officers of the “Alfred” and “Columbus,” and hearing their complaints against the two captains, the Committee reported to Congress on July 11 that the charge against Captain Saltonstall was not well founded, and that the charge against Captain Whipple “amounts to nothing more than a rough, indelicate mode of behaviour to his marine officers.” Congress ordered the two captains to repair to their commands, and recommended Captain Whipple “to cultivate harmony with his officers.”[174] Commodore Hopkins was not to get off so easily. His whole conduct since he left Philadelphia early in January, 1776, was investigated. The principal charge against him was the disobeying of the instructions of the Naval Committee of January 5, 1776, to attack the forces of the enemy in the region of Virginia and the Carolinas. Hopkins based his defence on the statement that the enemy in that region had become too strong to attack by the time his fleet had sailed on February 17, and also on a certain clause in his instructions granting him discretionary powers.[175] After the Marine Committee had investigated the case, and reported upon it, Congress, on August 12, took into consideration the “instructions given to Commodore Hopkins, his examination and answers to the Marine Committee, and the report of the Marine Committee thereupon; also, the farther defence by him made, and the testimony of the witnesses.” On the 15th, Congress came to the resolution: “That the said commodore Hopkins, during his cruise to the southward, did not pay due regard to the tenor of his instructions ... and, that his reasons for not going from Providence immediately to the Carolinas, are by no means satisfactory.” The next day Congress resolved, “that the said conduct of commodore Hopkins deserves the censure of this house, and this house does accordingly censure him.”[176]