When President Jefferson sent Pinkney to join Monroe in securing a comprehensive treaty with Great Britain, which should restore West India trade to its old condition and provide indemnity for the American vessels condemned in the admiralty courts, he set down, as a _sine qua non_ in his instructions, the renunciation by the British Government of the practice of impressment. It was an ultimatum which expressed a truly national feeling; but with the consciousness of power which the domination of the high seas gave, the British commissioners treated this ultimatum, somewhat contemptuously, as an impossible and unwarranted demand. The American mission should have ended then and there; but on obtaining assurances that greater care would be exercised in impressing seamen, Monroe and Pinkney determined to disregard their instructions. Negotiations were continued and culminated in a treaty, December 1, 1806, which ran counter to the injunctions of the President in every particular. He refused to submit the document to the Senate. Nevertheless, he permitted Madison to draft new instructions for the commissioners, in the hope that the treaty could be made a basis for further negotiations. While these new instructions were crossing the ocean, a disaster occurred which brought the United States and Great Britain to the verge of war. In the early months of 1807, some French frigates had run up Chesapeake Bay to escape a British squadron. Relying on what Jefferson pleasantly termed the hospitality of the United States, these British men-of-war dropped anchor in Lynnhaven Bay, near Cape Henry, where they could watch the passage through the capes. From one of these British vessels a boat crew of common seamen made their escape to Norfolk. Just at this time the new frigate Chesapeake, which had been partially fitted out at the navy yard at Washington for service in the Mediterranean, dropped down to Hampton Roads to receive her complement of guns and provisions for a three years' cruise. [Map: Tonnage of the United States 1807]