Before Bellomont's time no official except Governor Andros had tried to enforce the navigation acts. When Bellomont took office, he found all New York opposing him in his efforts to enforce them. When the ship _Fortune_, Captain Thomas Moston, came to port, bringing cargo worth £20,000 direct from Madagascar (where it had been purchased of a gang of pirates), and Bellomont asked Collector of Customs Chidley Brooks to seize her, he replied that "it was none of his business, but belonged to a Man of Warr; that he had no boat; and other excuses; and when I gave him positive commands to do it, which he could not avoid, yet his delay of four days" gave the smugglers time to unload and conceal all of the cargo except a part estimated to be worth £1000. Thus runs one of Bellomont's letters. He also acknowledged that several cargoes had already been smuggled in without his learning the fact until it was too late to intercept them. In Boston, as Bellomont learned, there were various ways of smuggling. "When ships come in the masters swear to their manifests; that is, they swear to the number of parcels they bring, but the contents unknown; then the merchant comes and produces an invoice, and whether true or false is left to his ingenuity." "If the merchants of Boston be minded to run their goods," he continues, "there's nothing to hinder them. Mr. Brenton, the Collector is absent and has been these two years; his deputy is a merchant; the two waiters keep public houses, and besides that, that coast is naturall shap'd and cut out to favour unlawful trade." It was a "common thing to unload their ships at Cape Ann and bring their goods to Boston in wood boats." If that were thought too expensive the goods could be "run" within the city, where there were "63 wharfs," or in Charlestown, where there were fourteen more, all unguarded. French and Spanish ships were bringing many goods to Newfoundland and the ports of Canada, where they met New England ships ready to "swap" cargoes. There was lively trade carried directly to the ports of Canada and to the French and Spanish ports of the West Indies.