The presence of American capital in these enterprises, and the connivance of the authorities, were proven in many cases and known in scores. In 1837 the English government informed the United States that from the papers of a captured slaver it appeared that the notorious slave-trading firm, Blanco and Carballo of Havana, who owned the vessel, had correspondents in the United States: "at Baltimore, Messrs. Peter Harmony and Co., in New York, Robert Barry, Esq."[57] The slaver "Martha" of New York, captured by the "Perry," contained among her papers curious revelations of the guilt of persons in America who were little suspected.[58] The slaver "Prova," which was allowed to lie in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and refit, was afterwards captured with two hundred and twenty-five slaves on board.[59] The real reason that prevented many belligerent Congressmen from pressing certain search claims against England lay in the fact that the unjustifiable detentions had unfortunately revealed so much American guilt that it was deemed wiser to let the matter end in talk. For instance, in 1850 Congress demanded information as to illegal searches, and President Fillmore's report showed the uncomfortable fact that, of the ten American ships wrongly detained by English men-of-war, nine were proven red-handed slavers.[60] The consul at Havana reported, in 1836, that whole cargoes of slaves fresh from Africa were being daily shipped to Texas in American vessels, that 1,000 had been sent within a few months, that the rate was increasing, and that many of these slaves "can scarcely fail to find their way into the United States." Moreover, the consul acknowledged that ships frequently cleared for the United States in ballast, taking on a cargo at some secret point.[61] When with these facts we consider the law facilitating "recovery" of slaves from Texas,[62] the repeated refusals to regulate the Texan trade, and the shelving of a proposed congressional investigation into these matters,[63] conjecture becomes a practical certainty. It was estimated in 1838 that 15,000 Africans were annually taken to Texas, and "there are even grounds for suspicion that there are other places ... where slaves are introduced."[64] Between 1847 and 1853 the slave smuggler Drake had a slave depot in the Gulf, where sometimes as many as 1,600 Negroes were on hand, and the owners were continually importing and shipping. "The joint-stock company," writes this smuggler, "was a very extensive one, and connected with leading American and Spanish mercantile houses. Our island[65] was visited almost weekly, by agents from Cuba, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, and New Orleans.... The seasoned and instructed slaves were taken to Texas, or Florida, overland, and to Cuba, in sailing-boats. As no squad contained more than half a dozen, no difficulty was found in posting them to the United States, without discovery, and generally without suspicion....