In June, 1780, Lewis was again in trouble and was writing to Congress. He conceived that the addition of members of Congress to the Board of Admiralty was principally intended to lay such information before Congress from time to time as the Board desired to give, to explain its reports, and in the absence, or during the sickness, of a commissioner to make a quorum. He said that, notwithstanding the attention which Madison and Ellery had been disposed to give, their necessary attendance on Congress did not admit of their being daily and constantly present at the sessions of the Board; that Ellery had been superseded in Congress; and that at present there was no Board for lack of a quorum.[237] Congress once more came to the rescue of Lewis and his Board by appointing Ellery and Thomas Woodford as commissioners.[238] Ellery at once accepted, but Woodford for some reason declined the appointment. Congress never obtained a third commissioner. In the fall of 1780 Daniel Huntington of Connecticut and Whitmill Hill of North Carolina were the Congressional members of the Board. On their being supplanted in November, 1780, by new delegates to Congress from their respective states, it took the urgent solicitation of Lewis to get Congress to fill the vacancies.[239] When the Board was discontinued in July, 1781, it had but one Congressional member, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer of Maryland. To all intents and purposes Lewis and Ellery were the Board of Admiralty; and in many respects they were well qualified for their positions. Both were able men, though not brilliant. Both had passed the meridian of life; Lewis was in his sixty-seventh year, and Ellery in his fifty-second. Both had taken prominent parts in the Revolutionary counsels in their respective states; both had been members of the Continental Congress and of the Marine Committee. Both were among the immortal Signers of the Declaration of Independence. Lewis had amassed a fortune as an importing merchant in New York, and had served in the French and Indian war. Ellery had been a merchant, and later a lawyer in Newport, Rhode Island. Both men were interested in naval affairs, and had rendered good service on the Marine Committee. Lewis’s work on the Board of Admiralty exceeded that of Ellery. From the first the Board of Admiralty was more dependent on Congress than the Marine Committee had been. Congress, always jealous of its prerogatives, naturally permitted a freer exercise of power to a committee of its own members, than to a mixed board, whose work was almost entirely that of commissioners selected outside the membership of Congress. To the Board’s dependence on Congress for its organization was added that for means to carry out its naval program. The frequency with which it went to Congress asking for quorums and money indicates its helplessness and weakness.