The Council had waited to find Captain Barry's example inducing the officers and men of the State fleet to engage in the enterprise--of taking all they could get from the enemy, so that any benefit arising from the plan should accrue to those who signalized themselves in the time of danger. So Captain Barry during the night, with four rowboats with twenty-seven men, started from Burlington and succeeded in passing Philadelphia undiscovered and so unmolested by the British. Barry was acting under orders of General Anthony Wayne, a fellow-member of the FRIENDLY SONS OF ST. PATRICK, who sent a detachment from Washington's army to aid in the enterprise. After passing Philadelphia, Barry began the destructive work of destroying forage. On February 26, 1778, he arrived off Port Penn and from there, that day, wrote General Washington at Valley Forge that he had "destroyed the forage from Mantua Creek to this place," amounting to four hundred tons. He would have proceeded further but "a number of the enemy's boats appeared and lined the Jersey shore, depriving us of the opportunity of proceeding on the same purpose." Barry discharged all but four of Washington's men, whom he kept to assist in getting the boats away, as his men were rendered incapable through fatigue. On March 7, 1778, off Bombay Hook, Barry with twenty-seven men in five rowboats captured the "Mermaid" and the "Kitty," transports from Rhode Island, laden with supplies for the British. He stripped the vessels and sent the supplies northward through New Jersey and burned the vessels. The "Alert," a British schooner with eight four-pounders, twelve four-pound howitzers and thirty-three men properly equipped for an armed vessel, came in sight while Barry was engaged in the encounter with the supply vessels. Barry sent a flag to Captain Morse, of the "Alert," demanding a surrender, promising that the officers would be allowed their private baggage, whereupon the "Alert" was "delivered up" to Captain Barry, who granted parole to the Captain to go to Philadelphia for a fortnight. "The schooner is a most excellent vessel for our purpose," wrote Captain Barry to General Washington two days later, when sending him a "cheese and a jar of pickled oysters" from the store of wines and luxuries intended for General Howe's table. He also sent a plan of New York "which may be of service," which he had taken on the "Alert."